American history by Stephen Kinzer
Overthrow, a book written by Stephen Kinzer, sets to examine the past in a bid to understand the present. It was written at the time of history when President George Bush waged war in Iraq. This is what inspired Kinzer to write this book. This book aims to examine the efforts of the country as seen through the years, with the motive of bringing change to the foreign regimes, as well as push the leaders to do better at their jobs. Kinzer accomplishes this book’s purpose by using his credentials as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and, most importantly, by being a witness of history throughout his career. This book provides a narrative history of the US’s role through a series of revolutions and invasions involving a total of fourteen foreign governments.
This book describes the whole story of American foreign policy. It is the first book to combine the historical knowledge of the individual cases and making a great comparison of them. By doing this, Kinzer makes his work an exciting narrative. He shows how arrogant citizens toss out legitimate governments and corrupt individuals, who were the root source of the problems of foreign policy, compared to the leaders removed from power. Kinzer bases his central argument on greed, mentioning the main villains as ITT, Aramco, among other corporations that operate through like-minded officials. He is also keen to incorporate the classical theory, which provided that overproduction causes a scramble for new markets. It also results in forcing foreign nations to purchase American products.
Kinzer managed to accomplish a lot with his book. This is manifested in how, for readers not used to his work, they can learn a lot about the other side of the American foreign policy. He mentions how the leaders of the nation manipulated the idealism around the American public, intending to achieve commercial purposes. He shows the indifference of these leaders, to the welfare of the indigenous people as well as the violation of the self-determination principle. Kinzer describes how these leaders used dirty deeds against other governments, and their support was mainly accorded to repressive regimes. Although this book doesn’t tell the entire story of the American foreign policy, it describes the most significant part of the story, which suggests that the US often tends to betray its own stipulated principles and exercise its power without any keen consideration.
One shortcoming of the book is that Kinzer underestimates the force of the geopolitical concerns throughout the cold war. In this aspect, Kinzer only makes claims of the economic motives that came across as really strong. Mr. Kinzer is not able to decide because at first, the reader sees him contending that issues such as the spread of democracy, introducing Christianity in non-Muslim countries, and establishing military bases worldwide, as well as putting foreign governments under the United States. For Kinzer, these were not ends but rather ways that the US used to ensure it had access to the markets, investment, and resources from potential countries. Later, we see him stating that “Americans overthrew governments only when economic interests coincided with ideological interests. He then goes on to describe the cases where intervention not only resulted from greed but humanitarian efforts as well. Kinzer picks to discount moralism and credit the power held by the respectful idea of American exceptionalism.
From the book, it is evident that everything mattered, but it clarifies that the story lets us know about the levers to adopt first if we want to change this pattern. The author makes an emphasis, saying that this book dwells on cases where the US role was decisive in deposing governments and not on the subsidiary part of the American agents. Looking at his work on this basis puts him in a situation where he refuses to acknowledge a wide range of activities such as the coup set against the right-wing dictator, yet the US supplied weapons for this at some point.
This book is a significant contribution to American history study. The arguments presented by the author are quite convincing, although certain loopholes can be identified. He argued that the involvement of the US in the regime changes, which was then explained to the American citizens using words like freedom, humanitarianism, and national security, which were only used to mask off the economic intentions of the US in this involvement. For history teachers who want to understand programs regarding American history, reading Kinzer’s book will be very beneficial for them and their students. This book may help us overcome the political, social, and cultural ignorance that allowed Americans to support the dirty deed of the leaders who robbed countries like Cuba of their freedom and causing years of misery in some.