How about the coups in Guatemala or Iran? In one sense, those are different because we viewed both of those countries as lesser powers and within our sphere of

How about the coups in Guatemala or Iran? In one sense, those are different because we viewed both of those countries as lesser powers and within our sphere of influence, but I would argue that the underlying philosophy of democracy is that all men and women, everywhere, are created equal, which means us secretly meddling in the elections of tiny Gadjookistan has comparable moral weight to Evil Empire meddling in ours. We don’t always live up to that ideal; pluralistic democracy certainly does better than a totalitarian system, but we aren’t blameless. I believe we can be a stronger advocate for democracy abroad by owning up to our past mistakes, making some kind of amends, and making plans for what to do in similar situations in the future that avoid making those mistakes. Containing communism was viewed as a critical threat, but how much did we hurt the long-term cause for democracy by taking short-term steps to suppress what may well have been early democratic socialist leaders? I can’t tell you for sure that Arbenz wouldn’t have been an early Hugo Chavez (at whose feet I lay most of the blame for Venezuela’s current troubles), but I think we ought to have at least let the Guatemalans make their own mistakes. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27éta... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état