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The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World
Russia’s foreign policy is following the lead of the United States. As politicos and pundits wring their hands about alleged Russian collusion and meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections, Dan Kovalik reminds us that the US has been meddling in other countries’ elections and democratic processes for decades, and with terrible results. While the US holds itself out as a beacon of democracy and freedom in the world, the US’s actions stray quite far from this pretense. From Vietnam in the 1950s, when the US blocked elections which would have allowed the Vietnamese people to vote for a unified country and for their own president, to the overthrow of democratic governments in Iran and Guatemala and the consequent installation of brutal regimes which killed tens of thousands, the US has undermined democracies in ways which make the alleged Russian “meddling” (the sum total of which involve claims of social media posts and computer hacking) look like mere child’s play. The Plot to Control the World details these instances of US interference and other instances of meddling in other countries’ democratic processes, such as in Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela, Greece, the Congo, Honduras, and even in Russia in the very recent past. These examples put the current allegations against Vladimir Putin and Russia into historical context and challenge the reader to consider that, if the US does not want other countries to interfere in its elections, it may be high time for the US to stop its interference in other countries around the world.
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 6, 2018
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214 people want to read
About the author
Dan Kovalik
12 books78 followersTeaches International Law and International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 24, 2020
Excellent account of U.S. imperial intervention in the following countries: Russia, Iran, Guatemala, DRC, Brazil, Vietnam, Chile, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Ukraine. The first chapter talks about U.S. foreign policy in general, using smaller (but still well explained) accounts of other instances of U.S. intervention, and some of the motives behind them, to expose the narrative that it is a benevolent force, or "force for good" in the world. The rest of the book goes into more detail about intervention in the aforementioned nations, providing a well-researched short history of U.S. "foreign policy". Also, the book was very easy to read, which is a reflection of Kovalik's skill as a writer. Definitely recommend this to anyone interested.
December 26, 2018
‘Make America Great Again’: Trump’s slogan seems both to yearn for a time when the United States had more influence, and to call for its pre-eminence to be restored. In its own way, it asserts that the US is – or should be – different. In fact it was only Trump’s predecessor, Obama, who was the first president to talk regularly about American exceptionalism, yet to Trump it is something that is long lost and it is his job to recover it. Yet belief in the US’s exceptional nature has been a constant feature of the country’s history, whoever has been president, and continues right up to the present day.
Its starting point in the early nineteenth century was the ‘Monroe doctrine’, the assertion of the US’s pre-eminent power in the western hemisphere, replacing the old colonial powers such as Spain and Portugal. Its domestic counterpart was the US’s God-given ‘manifest destiny’, which justified settlement of the whole North American continent, regardless of the presence of the people to whom much of the land already belonged. Whereas the Monroe doctrine at first reflected a degree of respect for the then newly emerging Latin American nations, by the end of the century it only thinly disguised a new kind of imperialism which justified US intervention anywhere in the hemisphere.
Soon after the end of the second world war, the former ‘great powers’ began to give up those colonies that had not already been returned to their rightful owners. But, fuelled by the cold war, the US began a new phase of imperialism. Dan Kovalik, in his new book The Plot to Control the World, quotes a report, which he says is almost certainly an underestimate, that the US interfered in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And even that number omits more serious interventions such as US-provoked coups, assassinations and invasions. Yet, as Kovalik says, ‘American exceptionalism’ requires a belief that the US is a unique force for democracy and freedom in the world. This enables the New York Times to justify US interference in the affairs of other countries because the US is unique in using its power to challenge dictators or otherwise promote democracy, whereas Russia (say) more often intervenes to disrupt democracy or promote authoritarian rule.
Dan Kovalik is far from the first author to show US intervention in its true light. Chomsky, William Blum and many others have trodden this path with, it seems, little effect on the conscience of most of the US population or, for that matter, on that of much of Europe’s. Kovalik’s approach is to take ten examples, reduce the history of each to its essentials, recount it in very readable form and ensure that it is bang up to date. In response to the current obsession with Russian interference in the last US presidential election, he begins with an account of the much more drastic action taken by the US to ensure the right result in Russia’s 1996 election. The rest of his choices are also strategic: Iran (where the long history of US interference began when it halted an emerging democracy in its tracks), Guatemala (where it did the same and created the conditions for a war in which perhaps 300,000 people died), Congo (which was on the point of bringing to an end perhaps the world’s worst colonial nightmare), Brazil (to show that even a giant among developing powers was not allowed to shape its own future), Vietnam (for the genocide which the US unleashed), Chile (to aid the birth of neoliberalism), Honduras (showing that the supposedly liberal Obama-Clinton administration could also disregard democracy), Nicaragua (where the story comes up to 2018) and Ukraine (where the US aims to deny Russia the right to influence even what happens on its own doorstep).
In Latin America, Kovalik uses five examples, but in truth he could have cited almost every country that is a former Spanish or Portuguese colony: of those, only Costa Rica has not been the subject of US intervention and arguably the US is so dominant in its economy and the country has been so obedient in never electing rulers who have challenged US hegemony, that it has earned its immunity. While most of the former British, French and Dutch colonies have been exempt from direct interference, there have been notable exceptions. The most obvious and most recent are Grenada in 1983 and Haiti on multiple occasions. One wonders what President James Monroe would think now of the consequences of the doctrine that still carries his name.
Kovalik quotes Harold Pinter as saying that an important feature of US interventions is that they ‘never happen’. Even while they are happening they aren’t happening. Everyone should look away. So often the role of the supposedly liberal media is to turn a blind eye, especially when a US-provoked disaster is taking place, or to tell the story that favours the intervention, rather that of people who suffer from it or are resisting it. Nicaragua is a case that is very much in point.
Dan Kovalik is a much better writer than William Blum and more accessible than Noam Chomsky. His book should be required reading in US colleges and could be a useful reminder to many politicians, political commentators and journalists in Europe of the real nature of the US’s ‘exceptionalism’. As the title says, what it really amounts to is an often overlooked and not very subtle ‘plot to control the world’. Why isn’t this the message conveyed by the mainstream media, and when will they start to tell the truth?
Its starting point in the early nineteenth century was the ‘Monroe doctrine’, the assertion of the US’s pre-eminent power in the western hemisphere, replacing the old colonial powers such as Spain and Portugal. Its domestic counterpart was the US’s God-given ‘manifest destiny’, which justified settlement of the whole North American continent, regardless of the presence of the people to whom much of the land already belonged. Whereas the Monroe doctrine at first reflected a degree of respect for the then newly emerging Latin American nations, by the end of the century it only thinly disguised a new kind of imperialism which justified US intervention anywhere in the hemisphere.
Soon after the end of the second world war, the former ‘great powers’ began to give up those colonies that had not already been returned to their rightful owners. But, fuelled by the cold war, the US began a new phase of imperialism. Dan Kovalik, in his new book The Plot to Control the World, quotes a report, which he says is almost certainly an underestimate, that the US interfered in 81 foreign elections between 1946 and 2000. And even that number omits more serious interventions such as US-provoked coups, assassinations and invasions. Yet, as Kovalik says, ‘American exceptionalism’ requires a belief that the US is a unique force for democracy and freedom in the world. This enables the New York Times to justify US interference in the affairs of other countries because the US is unique in using its power to challenge dictators or otherwise promote democracy, whereas Russia (say) more often intervenes to disrupt democracy or promote authoritarian rule.
Dan Kovalik is far from the first author to show US intervention in its true light. Chomsky, William Blum and many others have trodden this path with, it seems, little effect on the conscience of most of the US population or, for that matter, on that of much of Europe’s. Kovalik’s approach is to take ten examples, reduce the history of each to its essentials, recount it in very readable form and ensure that it is bang up to date. In response to the current obsession with Russian interference in the last US presidential election, he begins with an account of the much more drastic action taken by the US to ensure the right result in Russia’s 1996 election. The rest of his choices are also strategic: Iran (where the long history of US interference began when it halted an emerging democracy in its tracks), Guatemala (where it did the same and created the conditions for a war in which perhaps 300,000 people died), Congo (which was on the point of bringing to an end perhaps the world’s worst colonial nightmare), Brazil (to show that even a giant among developing powers was not allowed to shape its own future), Vietnam (for the genocide which the US unleashed), Chile (to aid the birth of neoliberalism), Honduras (showing that the supposedly liberal Obama-Clinton administration could also disregard democracy), Nicaragua (where the story comes up to 2018) and Ukraine (where the US aims to deny Russia the right to influence even what happens on its own doorstep).
In Latin America, Kovalik uses five examples, but in truth he could have cited almost every country that is a former Spanish or Portuguese colony: of those, only Costa Rica has not been the subject of US intervention and arguably the US is so dominant in its economy and the country has been so obedient in never electing rulers who have challenged US hegemony, that it has earned its immunity. While most of the former British, French and Dutch colonies have been exempt from direct interference, there have been notable exceptions. The most obvious and most recent are Grenada in 1983 and Haiti on multiple occasions. One wonders what President James Monroe would think now of the consequences of the doctrine that still carries his name.
Kovalik quotes Harold Pinter as saying that an important feature of US interventions is that they ‘never happen’. Even while they are happening they aren’t happening. Everyone should look away. So often the role of the supposedly liberal media is to turn a blind eye, especially when a US-provoked disaster is taking place, or to tell the story that favours the intervention, rather that of people who suffer from it or are resisting it. Nicaragua is a case that is very much in point.
Dan Kovalik is a much better writer than William Blum and more accessible than Noam Chomsky. His book should be required reading in US colleges and could be a useful reminder to many politicians, political commentators and journalists in Europe of the real nature of the US’s ‘exceptionalism’. As the title says, what it really amounts to is an often overlooked and not very subtle ‘plot to control the world’. Why isn’t this the message conveyed by the mainstream media, and when will they start to tell the truth?
January 30, 2023
I've read numerous books that explore US interference in various countries (the best being William Blum's Killing Hope). So I knew each of these cases of election interference by the world's biggest superpower quite well. However, I still found this a very easy and enjoyable read.
Kovalik is straight to the point. This is not a long book by any means (around 150 pages) and each of the situations it deals with, say, the US working to oust Mossadegh in Iran, could, and probably all have, had numerous books written about them. But here there are 11 chapters and they are all very concise.
What made this worth reading for me was the quotes. I love books on foreign policy that quote straight from the horse's mouth, because usually you don't even need to formulate a theory on why they are doing what they are doing; these officials often just admit to doing the most rotten shit imaginable (either in private or in public).
I learnt some interesting new details, mostly smaller ones, from this. If you are new to the US' foreign meddling however, you will likely gain a lot more from it. It's a decent primer on the subject.
Kovalik is straight to the point. This is not a long book by any means (around 150 pages) and each of the situations it deals with, say, the US working to oust Mossadegh in Iran, could, and probably all have, had numerous books written about them. But here there are 11 chapters and they are all very concise.
What made this worth reading for me was the quotes. I love books on foreign policy that quote straight from the horse's mouth, because usually you don't even need to formulate a theory on why they are doing what they are doing; these officials often just admit to doing the most rotten shit imaginable (either in private or in public).
I learnt some interesting new details, mostly smaller ones, from this. If you are new to the US' foreign meddling however, you will likely gain a lot more from it. It's a decent primer on the subject.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews