U.S. interventions in the New World, with leader removal

Marginal Revolution ^ | January 4, 2026 | Tyler Cowen

[karpov]

I can think of a few. I am not thinking of ongoing struggles, such as the funding of opposition to the Sandinistas, rather I wish to focus on cases where the key leaders actually were removed. After all, we know that is the case in Venezuela today. Maybe these efforts were rights violations, or unconstitutional, and yes that matters. But how did they fare in utilitarian terms?

Puerto Rico: 1898, a big success.

Mexican-American War: Removed Mexican leaders from what today is the American Southwest. Big utilitarian success, including for the many Mexicans who live there now.

Chile, and the coup against Allende: A utilitarian success, Chile is one of the wealthiest places in Latin America and a stable democracy today.

Grenada: Under Reagan, better than Marxism, not a huge success, but certainly an improvement.

Panama, under the first Bush, or for that matter much earlier to get the Canal built: Both times a big success.

Haiti, under Clinton, and also 1915-1934: Unclear what the counterfactuals should be, still this case has to be considered a terrible failure.

Cuba, 1906-1909: Unclear? Nor do I know enough to assess the counterfactual.

Dominican Republic, 1961 and Trujillo. A success, as today the DR is one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America. But the positive developments took a long time.

I do not know enough about the U.S. occupation of the DR 1916-1924 to judge that instance. But not an obvious success?

Can we count the American Revolution itself? The Civil War? Both I would say were successes.

We played partial but perhaps non-decisive roles in regime changes in Ecuador 1963 and Brazil 1964, in any case I consider those results to be unclear. Maybe Nicaragua 1909-1933 counts here as well.

[oldasrocks]

Just think if someone had taken Hitler out.

[Redmen4ever]

Tyler is being very objective.

A conclusion is that Latin Americans are ready for democracy. Much more so than many other people of the world.

Latin Americans are, after all, Christians and - while Catholic Christians - they share many of the same values that northern Americans do.

The Mexicans that became U.S. citizens following the Mexican-American war have done fine. Among recent immigrants, Hispanics have been quick to assimilate. They are family-oriented, patriotic and entrepreneurial. If the Congress would give the President some flexibility in identifying “merit” among immigrants, Trump would use the flexibility well.

Unfortunately, the narco-dictators of Latin America have been sending their criminals and their insane to our country. That we have to end.

[aquila48]

I guess this falls under the ategory “does the eand justify the means?”

To me the answer is yes, if the net gain of achieving that “end” outweighs whatever the negatives of the means might be.

I think that’s definitely so in this case.

The world is way better off without that corrupt and murderer Maduro.

As for the means used by Trump, some might quibble with its legality, but it’s no more than a nit compared to the positives it accomplished.

[Organic Panic]

I really enjoy reading about how Panama came to be and how we basically took it over with out a shot being fired.

[Nateman]

Turkey WW1 : temporary success. WWII Germany, Japan : success. Iraq. Fail. Afghanistan. Fail. The moral of the story is that Islam is too corrosive for a society to ever work long term.