When Power Decides for Others: An Intimate History of American Imperialism
There is nothing abstract about imperialism. It is not an idea. It is not a cold academic concept. It is a reality.
Imperialism has bodies, it has names, it has graves, it has raped women, displaced children, countries split in two, and entire generations condemned to poverty so that others may live in abundance.
For more than a century, the United States has intervened directly or indirectly in dozens of countries. Not always with soldiers. Sometimes with debt. Sometimes with coups. Sometimes with sanctions that kill more than bombs. Sometimes with open wars.
The pattern always repeats itself, but the forms of imperialism don't always arrive with tanks…
Before discussing countries, we must understand how they operate. US imperialism doesn't use a single tool, but several, combined:
1. Debt as a weapon
Through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, loans are imposed with conditions that: force the privatization of water, energy, and healthcare; destroy local economies; and hand over resources to foreign multinationals. It's not aid. It's control.
The United States is the largest single shareholder in the World Bank, giving it a significant core of influence within that international financial institution with ~16% of the shares and votes, more than any other country.
That proportion effectively gives it veto power over important structural changes, because major decisions require a very high majority (above 85%).
What does this imply?
The World Bank's strategic decisions, such as appointments, lending policies, and funding priorities, are often heavily influenced by the countries with the largest stakes.
Traditionally, the President of the World Bank is appointed with the backing of the United States, which reinforces its de facto influence within the institution.
2. “Clean” coups d'état
When a government decides to nationalize resources or not to align itself: the opposition is financed, the media is manipulated, the economy is sabotaged, and finally the government is overthrown.
The CIA has acknowledged its involvement in multiple operations of this kind. This isn't a rumor: it's in declassified files.
We cannot state that the U.S. earned X million, because in most cases the benefit was strategic, geopolitical, or corporate, not a direct payment to the U.S. government, but we can give you an approximate list of the benefits it obtained in each "unofficial intervention".
Iran (1953)
Mohammad Mossadegh
Direct intervention (Operation Ajax)
Without open war
Benefit:
Indirect economic impact: reopening of the oil sector to a Western consortium (including US companies).
Strategic director: key ally in the Middle East against the USSR.
Guatemala (1954)
Jacobo Árbenz
Direct intervention (Operation PBSUCCESS)
Without conventional warfare
Benefit:
Indirect economic impact: protection of the interests of the United Fruit Company.
Strategic direct: deterrent message in Central America.
Congo (1960–61)
Patrice Lumumba
Indirect support
Subsequent internal conflict
Benefit:
Indirect economic benefit: stability favorable to Western access to strategic minerals (uranium, cobalt).
Strategic directive: avoid Soviet alignment.
Brazil (1964)
Logistical and political support
Without open war
Benefit:
Indirect economic impact: opening to foreign capital.
Strategic director: regional anti-communist ally.
Chile (1973)
Salvador Allende
Financing and prior destabilization
Military coup, not international war
Benefit:
Indirect economic impact: implementation of a neoliberal model favorable to foreign investment.
Strategic objective: elimination of elected Marxist government.
Argentina (1976)
Subsequent diplomatic support
Internal military dictatorship
Benefit:
Strategic: regional bloc aligned with the US
No evidence of direct financial benefit.
Nicaragua (1980s)
Direct support for the Contras
Internal armed conflict
Benefit:
Strategic: Containment of the Sandinista government.
No documented direct economic benefit.
Venezuela (2002 – failed attempt)
Contacts and prior knowledge
Without war
Benefit sought (not achieved):
Political and oil reconfiguration.
3. Open wars
When everything else fails, war comes: with false excuses, with manipulated reports, but above all with irreversible consequences.
Iran (1953)
Official justification: To contain communism.
Real context: Mossadegh nationalized British oil.
Deaths: The coup left dozens to hundreds in initial riots (not mass war).
Human consequence:
25 years of the Shah's dictatorship.
Systematic repression (SAVAK).
Benefit for the US:
Western oil access.
Strategic ally in the Middle East.
Vietnam (1955–1975)
Official justification: To contain communist expansion (Domino Theory).
Deaths:
2 to 3 million Vietnamese.
58,000 US soldiers.
Human consequences:
Use of napalm and Agent Orange.
Thousands of children born with malformations.
Mass displacements.
Benefit:
Failed attempt at geopolitical containment.
No clear economic benefit.
Guatemala (1954 + later civil war)
Official justification: Communist threat.
Deaths (civil war 1960–1996):
Approximately 200,000 people.
The majority are indigenous civilians.
Consequences:
Rural massacres.
Mass displacements.
Benefit:
Protection of corporate interests (United Fruit).
Regional influence.
Chile (1973)
Official justification: To prevent Marxist expansion.
Deaths under dictatorship:
3,000 killed or disappeared.
Tens of thousands tortured.
Consequences:
Torture centers.
Mass exile.
Benefit:
Neoliberal economic model.
Anti-communist ally.
Iraq (2003)
Official justification: Weapons of mass destruction (not found).
Estimated deaths:
Between 200,000 and more than 500,000 civilians (according to different estimates).
Consequences:
Regional destabilization.
Rise of ISIS.
Collapsed infrastructure.
Benefit:
Geopolitical influence in the Middle East.
Reconstruction contracts for Western companies.
Strategic control in oil-producing areas.
Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Official justification: Response to 9/11, eliminate Al Qaeda.
Estimated deaths:
More than 170,000 people.
Tens of thousands of civilians.
Consequences:
Mass displacement.
Country economically devastated.
Benefit:
Strategic presence in Central Asia.
No direct sustainable economic benefit.
Libya (2011 – NATO intervention with US leadership)
Official justification: To protect civilians.
Estimated deaths:
Tens of thousands during the war.
Consequences:
failed state.
Human trafficking and documented slavery after the fall of the regime.
Benefit:
Elimination of a government hostile to the West.
Regional geopolitical reconfiguration.
Sometimes the word “interest” sounds clean. Technical. Cold. Strategic interest. Economic interest. Security interest. But behind that word, all too often, there are bodies. There are razed cities, mothers burying their children, children growing up among ruins they didn't choose. When a power decides to intervene to protect its economic model, its alliances, or its corporations, it rarely pays the human price on its own soil. That price is paid by others: displaced women, fractured families, generations scarred by violence.
There isn't always a document that says, "We did it for money." Sometimes it's about freedom, stability, democracy. But the result—time and again—is that entire societies are devastated while the global economic order remains intact. And although not everything can be reduced to a single cause, it's impossible to ignore that the defense of strategic and corporate interests has more often outweighed the lives of those caught in the crossfire.
Power is never exercised in the abstract. It always falls on someone. And it almost always falls on the most vulnerable.
4. Economic sanctions
The United States has imposed economic sanctions on numerous countries over the decades as a foreign policy tool. These sanctions are legal, not military, measures that restrict trade, access to dollars, technology, investment, or the international financial system. Their stated objective is usually to pressure for political change, punish human rights violations, curb nuclear programs, or respond to conflicts, although they are also interpreted by critics as instruments of geopolitical coercion.
Countries that have been sanctioned by the U.S. (main historical and current cases)
America
Cuba
Venezuela
Nicaragua
Europe / Eurasia
Russia
Belarus
Africa
Sudan (historically)
Zimbabwe
Middle East and Central Asia
Iran
Iraq (especially in the 1990s)
Syria
Afghanistan (after the Taliban takeover in 2021)
East Asia
North Korea
China (targeted sanctions against companies and officials)
How sanctions work as a pressure tool
US sanctions are typically enforced through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and may include:
Financial blockade
Freezing of dollar assets.
Ban on using international banks that operate with the U.S.
Exclusion of systems such as SWIFT (when coordinating with allies).
Trade restrictions
Prohibition on exporting technology, refined oil, weapons, industrial spare parts, etc.
Total embargoes (e.g., Cuba for decades).
Secondary sanctions
Punishment for foreign companies that trade with the sanctioned country.
This extends the effect beyond the US, because many companies depend on the US market.
Targeted sanctions
Blacklists against politicians, soldiers, oligarchs or specific companies.
Freezing of personal accounts and travel ban.
Economic sanctions are a central instrument of modern international power. They are not neutral: they function as an extremely powerful mechanism of political and financial pressure. Their effectiveness depends on the context; sometimes they achieve diplomatic concessions, other times they prolong conflicts or internal crises. For this reason, they remain one of the most controversial tools of contemporary geopolitics.
Those who defend them say
They are an alternative to war.
They punish governments without military intervention.
They pressure negotiations (e.g., the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015).
Those who criticize them say
They tend to affect the civilian population more than the elites.
They can cause medicine shortages or inflation.
Sometimes they strengthen authoritarian governments by allowing them to blame external powers.
And therein lies the real problem: sanctions don't punish governments entirely; they punish entire populations. The pain isn't felt in the offices where they are signed; it's felt in hospitals without antibiotics, in empty refrigerators, in mothers who break pills into quarters to make them last a little longer. It's felt in the darkness when the electricity fails, in the silence of pharmacies without insulin, in the inflation that turns wages into dust. They are slow deaths, without bombs or headlines, but just as real. In Iraq during the nineties, in Venezuela, in Iran, in Cuba, in Syria, in Zimbabwe, in North Korea, in Afghanistan; different countries, different governments, but populations trapped between geopolitical decisions they don't control. Sanctions promise political pressure, but what they leave behind, all too often, is hunger, forced migration, overwhelmed hospitals, and generations marked by precariousness. And while leaders negotiate, children grow up with deprivations they didn't choose, and the elderly die waiting for medicines that never arrive. The punishment rarely sits in the halls of power; It almost always falls on those who have the least power.
Conclusion:
In movies, the United States always arrives at the end with its flag waving and epic music playing, as if the world needed rescuing by its firm hand. In real life, too often what remains after its intervention are not end credits, but ruins: cities reduced to rubble, shattered economies, generations growing up amidst trauma and loss, mothers burying their children, children learning the word "war" before the word "future." Decisions made in the name of security, the market, or stability have left deep scars on countries still trying to rebuild. It's not a heroic script; it's a story full of contradictions, where global power has meant pain, displacement, and loss for many peoples. And while the official narrative speaks of freedom, in too many places freedom arrived as smoke, debt, hunger, and silence. But the most perverse thing is not just what they did, but how they rewrote history to portray themselves as saviors while leaving behind broken, indebted, and traumatized countries.
No, the United States was never the hero, but the true villain of this story.
Bibliography and verifiable sources
United States National Security Archive (George Washington University).
CIA – Declassified Documents on Iran, Guatemala, Chile.
United Nations Human Rights Reports (various countries).
Human Rights Watch – Country Reports.
Amnesty International – Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts.
Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival.
Stiglitz, Joseph. Globalization and Its Discontents.
Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Eisenhower, Dwight D. Farewell Address, 1961.
The Lancet – Iraq mortality studies.
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