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January 22, 2025

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Section 2

  • [1] Mitchell, L. A. (2012). The Color Revolutions. University of Pennsylvania Press. “Thus, a useful definition of Color Revolution must capture the commonalities that make it possible for this term to represent a discrete political phenomenon, but efforts to do this must also be tempered by recognizing the distinct characteristics and real differences between these political events. The key elements shared by the three Color Revolutions can be summarized as follows: Color Revolutions leverage stolen elections into political breakthroughs.; Color Revolutions, at least in the short term, are widely viewed as democratic breakthroughs.; Consolidating post-Color Revolution democracy is very difficult, so Color Revolutions can more accurately be described as transitioning from one form of semi-democracy to another, rather than as an unambiguous step forward for democracy.; Color Revolutions are mostly nonviolent.; Color Revolutions occur in countries where for a variety of reasons the state, and government, are weak.; While civil society organizations and public activity of varying sizesIntroduction are present, Color Revolutions are political events in which politicians play the major role.; The role played by the international democracy assistance community varies substantially, but in all cases it is pivotal, even if minor.

The third element has become clearer now that all the Color Revolutions are several years old. Nonetheless, it is an important and distinctive element of Color Revolutions.” (p. 10-11)

  • [2] Mitchell, L. A. (2012). The Color Revolutions. University of Pennsylvania Press. “The Akaev regime was the least democratic of the three pre-Color Revo-

lutionary governments; and the Tulip Revolution strayed from the peaceful

mass protest model of the Rose, Orange, and even Bulldozer revolutions. For this reason, it should not be at all surprising that Kyrgyzstan remained the least democratic during Bakiev’s rule. The difference in this regard between Ukraine and Georgia is intriguing.” (p. 137)

  • [3] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. ”The most insidious part of the CIA operation in the Philippines was the fundamental manipulation of the nation'’s political life, featuring stage-managed elections and disinformation campaigns. The high-point of this effort was the election to the presidency, in 1953, of Ramon Magsaysay, the cooperative former defense department head. Lansdale, it was said, “invented” Magsaysay. Flis CIA front organizations—such as the National Movement for Free Elections—ran the Filipino’s campaign with all the license, impunity, and money that one would expect from the Democratic or Republican National Committees operating in the US, or perhaps more to the point. Mayor Daley operating in Chicago. Yet the New York Times is an editorial, was moved to refer to the Phillippines as “democracy’s showcase in Asia.”” (p. 43)

  • [4] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. ”By the end of the Second World War, every American past the age of 40 had been subjected to some 25 years of anti-communist radiation, the average incubation period needed to produce a malignancy. Anti-communism had developed a life of its own, independent of its capitalist father. Increasingly, in the post-war period, middle-aged Washington policy makers and diplomats saw the world out there as one composed of “communists” and “anti-communists”, whether of nations, movements or individuals. This comic-strip vision of the world, with American supermen fighting communist evil everywhere, had graduated from a cynical propaganda exercise to a moral imperative of US foreign policy. Even the concept of “non-communist”, implying some measure of neutrality, has generally been accorded scant legitimacy in this paradigm. John Foster Dulles, one of the major architects of post-war US foreign policy, expressed this succinctly in his usually simple, moralistic way; “For us there are two sorts of people in the world: there are those who are Christians and support free enterprise and there are the others.”” (p. 12-13)

  • [5] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. ”By 1953 the Huks were scattered and demoralized, no longer a serious threat, although their death would be distributed over the next few years. It is difficult to ascertain to what extent their decline was due to the traditional military force employed against them, or to Lansdale’s more unorthodox methods, or to the eventual debilitation of many of the Huks from malnutrition and disease, brought on by the impoverishment of the peasantry. Long before the end, many Huks were also lacking weapons and ammunition and proper military equipment, bringing into question the oft-repeated charge of Soviet and Chinese aid to them made by Filipino and American authorities. Edward Lachica, a Filipino historian, has written that “The Kremlin did pay lip service to the Communist movement in the Philippines, praising the Huks for being part of the ‘global struggle against the U.S.’, but no material support was offered. “Since the destruction of Huk military power,” noted George Taylor, “the social and political program that made the accomplishment possible has to a large extent fallen by the wayside. Fortress America, however, was securely in place in southeast Asia. From the Philippines would be launched American air and sea actions against Korea and China, Vietnam and Indonesia. The Philippine government would send combat forces to fight alongside the US in Vietnam and Korea. On the islands’ bases, the technology and art of counter-insurgency warfare would be imparted to the troops of America’s other allies in the Pacific.” (p. 44)

  • [6] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “In March, the Justice Department, over which Clark presided, determined that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the US would not be allowed to emigrate to, or even enter, the US. This was but one tactic in a remarkable American campaign to ensure that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the US would not be allowed to form a government of a differing ideology in Italy in their election of 1948. Two years earlier, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), one of the largest in the world,and the Socialist Party (PSI) had together garnered more votes and more seats in the Constituent Assembly election than the Christian Democrats. But the two parties of the left had run separate candidates and thus had to be content with some ministerial posts in a coalition cabinet under a Christian Democrat premier. The results, nonetheless, spoke plainly enough to put the fear of Marx into the Truman administration. For the 1948 election, scheduled for 18 April, the PCI and PSI united to form the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) and in February won municipal elections in Pescara with a 10 percent increase in their vote over 1946. The Christian Democrats ran a poor second. The prospect of the left winning control of the Italian government loomed larger than ever before. It was at this point that the US began to train its big economic and political guns upon the Italian people. All the good old Yankee know-how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public opinion, all the Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the “target market”. Pressing domestic needs in Italy, such as agricultural and economic reform, the absence of which produced abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, were not to be the issues of the day. The lines of battle would be drawn around the question of “democracy”vs. “commu- nism” (the idea of “capitalism” remaining discreetly to one side). The fact that the Communists had been the single most active anti-fascist group in Italy during the war, undergoing ruthless persecution, while the Christian Democrat government of 1948 and other electoral opponents on the right were riddled through with collaborators, monarchists and plain unreconstructed fascists... this too would be ignored; indeed, turned around. It was now a matter of Communist “dictatorship” vs. their adversaries’ love of “freedom”: this was presumed a priori. As one example, a group of American congressmen visited Italy in summer 1947 and casually and arbitrarily concluded that “The country is under great pressure from within and without to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian-collective national organization. To make any of this at all credible, the whole picture had to be pushed and squeezed into the frame of The American Way of Life vs. The Soviet Way of Life, a specious proposition which must have come as somewhat of a shock to leftists who regarded themselves as Italian and neither Russian nor American. In February 1948, after non-Communist ministers in Czechoslovakia had boycotted cabinet meetings over a dispute concerning police hiring practices, the Communist government dissolved the coalition cabinet and took sole power. The Voice of America pointed to this event repeatedly, as a warning to the Italian people of the fate awaiting them if Italy “went Communist” (and used as well by anti-communists for decades afterward as a prime example of communist duplicity). Yet, by all appearances, the Italian Christian Democrat government and the American government had conspired the previous year in an even more blatant usurpation of power. In January 1947, when Italian Premier Alcide de Gasperi visited Washington at the US’ invitation, his overriding concern was to plead for crucial financial assistance for his war-torn, impoverished country. American officials may have had a different priority. Three days after returning to Italy, de Gasperi unexpectedly, dissolved his cabinet, which included several Communists and Socialists. The press reported that many people in Italy believed that de Ciasperi’s action was related to his visit to the US and was aimed at decreasing leftist, principally Communist, influence in the government. After two weeks of tortuous delay, the formation of a center or center-right government sought by de Gasperi proved infeasible; the new cabinet still included Communists and Socialists although the left had lost key positions, notably the ministries of foreign affairs and finance. From this point until May, when de Gasperi’s deputy, Ivan Lombardo, led a mission to Washington to renew the request for aid, promised loans were “frozen” by the US for reasons not very clear. On several occasions during this period the Italian left asserted their belief that the aid was being held up pending the ouster of leftists from the cabinet. The New York Times was moved to note that, “Some observers here feel that a further Leftward swing in Italy would retard aid.” As matters turned out, the day Lombardo arrived in Washington, de Gasperi again dissolved his entire cabinet and suggested that the new cabinet would manage without the benefit of leftist members. This was indeed what occurred, and over the ensuing few months, exceedingly generous American financial aid flowed into Italy, in addition to the cancellation of the nation’s $1 billion debt to the US.” (p. 27-29)

Section 3

  • [1] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “Among the many measures undertaken: Nicaragua was excluded from US government programs which promote American investment and trade; sugar imports from Nicaragua were slashed by 90 percent; and, without excessive subtlety but with notable success, Washington pressured the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, and the European Common Market to withhold loans to Nicaragua. The director of the IDB, Mr. Kevin O’Sullivan, later revealed that in 1983 the US had opposed a loan to aid Nicaraguan fishermen on the grounds that the country did not have adequate fuel for their boats. A week later, O’Sullivan pointed out, “saboteurs blew up a major Nicaraguan fuel depot in the port of Corinto”,’ an action described by an American intelligence source as “totally a CIA operation.”” (pp. 291–292).

  • [2] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press.“Not a nut or bolt [will] be allowed to reach Chile under Allende,” warned then-American Ambassador Edward Korry before the confirmation. The Chilean economy, so extraordinarily dependent upon the US, was the country’s soft underbelly, easy to pound. Over the next three years, new US government assistance programs for Chile plummeted almost to the vanishing point; similarly with loans from the US Export-Import Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, in which the US held what amounted to a veto; and the World Bank made no new loans at all to Chile during 1971–73. US government financial assistance or guarantees to American private investment in Chile were cut back sharply and American businesses were given the word to tighten the economic noose. What this boycott translated into were things like the many buses and taxis out of commission in Chile due to a lack of replacement parts; and similar difficulties in the copper, steel, electricity and petroleum industries. American suppliers refused to sell needed parts despite Chile’s offer to pay cash in advance. Multinational ITT, which didn’t need to be told what to do, stated in a 1970 memorandum: “A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a swiftly-deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military coup.” In the midst of the near disappearance of economic aid, and contrary to its warning, the US increased its military assistance to Chile during 1972 and 1973 as well as training Chilean military personnel in the US and Panama. The Allende government, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, was reluctant to refuse this “assistance” for fear of antagonizing its military leaders. Perhaps nothing produced more discontent in the population than the shortages, the little daily annoyances when one couldn’t get a favorite food, or flour or cooking oil, or toilet paper, bed sheets or soap, or the one part needed to make the TV set or the car run; or, worst of all, when a nicotine addict couldn’t get a cigarette. Some of the scarcity resulted from Chile being a society in transition: various changeovers to state ownership, experiments in workers’ control, etc. But this was minor compared to the effect of the aid squeeze and the practices of the omnipresent American corporations. Equally telling were the extended strikes in Chile, which relied heavily on CIA financial support for their prolongation.” (p. 211).

  • [3] Kinzer, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books. “The prime ministers did not sign any document that night. In public they said only that they had decided to punish Grenada with economic sanctions. Privately, though, they gave the Americans good news: they had agreed to request US intervention. Gillespie immediately notified Washington. Secretary of State Shultz’s telephone at the Eisenhower Cottage rang at 2:45 on Saturday morning. As soon as he heard that his diplomats had succeeded in extracting an appeal for armed help from Caribbean leaders, he woke McFarlane. During the predawn hours, they telephoned several others in the military chain of command. Finally they roused Reagan.” (p. 220).

  • [4] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “After channeling funds to several non-leftist parties, the electoral team eventually settled on a man of the center, Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Christian Democratic Party, as the one most likely to block Allende’s rise to power. The CIA underwrote more than half the party’s total campaign costs, one of the reasons that the Agency’s overall electoral operation reduced the U.S. Treasury by an estimated $20 million—much more per voter than that spent by the Johnson and Coldwater campaigns combined in the same year in the US. The bulk of the expenditures went toward propaganda. As the Senate committee described it: In addition to support for political parties, the CIA mounted a massive anti-communist propaganda campaign. Extensive use was made of the press, radio, films, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, direct mailings, paper streamers, and wall painting. It was a “scare campaign,” which relied heavily on images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads and was directed especially to women. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the anti-communist pastoral letter of Pope Pius XI were distributed by Christian Democratic organizations. They carried the designation, “printed privately by citizens without political affiliation, in order more broadly to disseminate its content.” “Disinformation” and “black propaganda”—material which purported to originate from another source, such as the Chilean Communist Party—were used as well. The scare campaign played up to the fact that women in Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America, are traditionally more religious than men, more susceptible to being alarmed by the specter of “godless, atheist communism.” One radio spot featured the sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman’s cry: “They have killed my child—the communists.” The announcer then added in impassioned tones: “Communism offers only blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president.” Other scare tactics centered around warnings of Russian control, and that the left would confiscate everything near, dear and holy.” (pp. 206–207).

  • [5] Kinzer, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books. “Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud and the dominant figure in his young profession… [proposed] that United Fruit launch a campaign to blacken the image of Guatemala’s government. That, he argued, could decisively weaken it and perhaps set off events that would trigger its collapse. “I have the feeling that Guatemala might respond to pitiless publicity in this country,” Bernays surmised. First were a series of articles in the New York Times, portraying Guatemala as falling victim to ‘reds’; they appeared after Bernays visited Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Next came reports in leading magazines, most of them written, like the Times series, with helpful advice from Bernays. Then Bernays began organizing press junkets to Guatemala. They produced glowing dispatches about United Fruit and terrifying ones about the emergence of Marxist dictatorship in Guatemala.” (p. 134).

  • [6] Kinzer, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books. “Prominent members of Congress echoed these themes. Most outspoken among them was a Massachusetts senator with a familiar name, Henry Cabot Lodge, scion of two families that United Fruit had helped make rich. In the same chamber where his grandfather and namesake had helped secure American control of Cuba and the Philippines more than half a century before, Lodge delivered vituperative speeches depicting Guatemalan leaders as crypto-Communists. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, the majority leader and future speaker, John McCormack—also from Massachusetts, where United Fruit had sustained generations of prosperity—rose regularly to deliver chilling warnings that Guatemala’s democratic leaders had become ‘subservient to the Kremlin’s design for world conquest’ and were turning their country into ‘a Soviet beachhead.’ This rhetoric reached a new peak after the Agrarian Reform Law was passed. Powerful officials in Washington, products of the international business world and utterly ignorant of the realities of Guatemalan life, considered the idea of land redistribution to be inherently Marxist.” (pp. 134–135).

  • [7] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “Several of the grassroots programs funded by the CIA were those run by Roger Vekemans, a Belgian Jesuit priest who arrived in Chile in 1957 and founded a network of social-action organizations, one of which grew to have 100 employees and a $30 million annual budget. By his own declaration in 1963, Vekemans received $5 million from the CIA as well as a like amount from AID to guide his organizations’ resources in support of the Christian Democrats and Eduardo Frei, with whom Vekemans had close relations. The Jesuit’s programs served the classic function of channeling revolutionary zeal along safe reformist paths. Church people working for the CIA in the Third World have usually been involved in gathering information about the activities and attitudes of individual peasants and workers, spotting the troublemakers, recruiting likely agents, preaching the gospel of anti-communism, acting as funding conduits, and serving as a religious ‘cover’ for various Agency operations.” (pp. 207–208).

  • [8] Kinzer, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books. “Kermit Roosevelt’s triumph in Iran showed them the way. They decided to design a Guatemalan version of Operation Ajax. To reflect their confidence, they code-named it Operation Success. On December 3, 1953, the CIA authorized an initial $3 million to set the plot in motion. It would start with a propaganda campaign, proceed through a wave of destabilizing violence, and culminate in an attack staged to look like a domestic uprising. This operation, though, would be much larger in scale than the one in Iran. Allen Dulles’s idea was to find a suitable opposition leader among Guatemalan exiles; equip him with a militia that could pose as a full-scale rebel army, hire American pilots to bomb Guatemala City, and then, with the country in chaos, have the American ambassador tell military commanders that peace would return only if they deposed Arbenz.” (p. 136).

  • [9] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “As a result of a controversy in 1984—when NED funds were used to aid a Panamanian presidential candidate backed by Noriega and the CIA—Congress enacted a law prohibiting the use of NED funds ‘to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office.’ The ways to circumvent the letter and/or spirit of such a prohibition were not difficult to conceive. NED first allocated millions to help organize UNO, building up the parties and organizations that formed and supported the coalition. Then a variety of other organizations—civic, labor, media, women’s, etc.—run by UNO activists received grants for all kinds of ‘non-partisan’ and ‘pro-democracy’ programs, for voter education, voter registration, job skills, and so on. Large grants made to UNO itself were specified for items such as office equipment and vehicles. Money received by UNO for any purpose of course freed up their own money for use in the campaign and helped all of their candidates. Moreover, the US continued to fund the contras, some of whom campaigned for UNO in rural areas.” (pp. 304–305).

  • [10] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “The student movements were amongst the recipients of National Endowment for Democracy grants, to the tune of $100,000 ‘to provide infrastructure support to the Federation of Independent Student Associations of Bulgaria to improve its outreach capacity in preparation for the national elections.’ The students received ‘faxes, video and copying equipment, loudspeakers, printing equipment and low-cost printing techniques,’ as well as the help of various Polish advisers, American legal advisers, and other experts—the best that NED money could buy. The first victory for the protest movement came on 6 July, less than a month after the election, when President Mladenov was forced to resign after a week of protests—including a hunger strike outside of Parliament—over his actions during an anti-governmental demonstration the previous December.” (pp. 316–317).

  • [11] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “Meanwhile, the Agency was in active consultation with several Chilean military officers who were receptive to the suggestion of a coup. (The difficulty in finding such officers was described by the CIA as a problem in overcoming ‘the apolitical, constitutional-oriented inertia of the Chilean military.’) They were assured that the US would give them full support short of direct military involvement. The immediate obstacle faced by the officers was the determined opposition of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Rene Schneider, who insisted that the constitutional process be followed. He would have to be ‘removed.’ In the early morning of 22 October the CIA passed ‘sterilized’ machine guns and ammunition to some of the conspirators. (Earlier they had passed tear gas.) That same day, Schneider was mortally wounded in an attempted kidnap (or ‘kidnap’) on his way to work. The CIA station in Santiago cabled its headquarters that the general had been shot with the same kind of weapons it had delivered to the military plotters, although the Agency later claimed to the Senate that the actual assassins were not the same ones it had passed the weapons to.” (pp. 210–211).

  • [12] Kinzer, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books. “To reflect their confidence, they code-named it Operation Success… Allen Dulles’s idea was to find a suitable opposition leader among Guatemalan exiles; equip him with a militia that could pose as a full-scale rebel army, hire American pilots to bomb Guatemala City, and then, with the country in chaos, have the American ambassador tell military commanders that peace would return only if they deposed Arbenz.” (p. 136).

  • [13] Blum, W. (1995). Killing hope: U.S. military and CIA interventions since World War II. Common Courage Press. “In September the military prevailed. ‘It is clear,’ said the Senate investigating committee, ‘the CIA received intelligence reports on the coup planning of the group which carried out the successful September 11 coup throughout the months of July, August, and September 1973.’ The American role on that fateful day was one of substance and shadow. The coup began in the Pacific coast port of Valparaiso with the dispatch of Chilean naval troops to Santiago, while US Navy ships were present offshore, ostensibly to participate in joint maneuvers with the Chilean Navy. The American ships stayed outside of Chilean waters, but remained on the alert.” (pp. 213–214).

  • [14] Kinzer, S. (2007). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books. “Kermit Roosevelt’s triumph in Iran showed them the way. They decided to design a Guatemalan version of Operation Ajax. To reflect their confidence, they code-named it Operation Success. On December 3, 1953, the CIA authorized an initial $3 million to set the plot in motion. It would start with a propaganda campaign, proceed through a wave of destabilizing violence, and culminate in an attack staged to look like a domestic uprising.” (p. 136).

Section 4

  • [1] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “Although many coups are homegrown, one obvious historic model of a foreign-assisted coup in Iran is Operation Ajax, the 1953 coup d’état that overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq and reinstated the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi. To carry out the coup, the CIA and British intelligence supported General Fazlollah Zahedi, providing him and his followers with money and propaganda, as well as helping organize their activities.” (p. 124).

  • [2] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “The U.S. officials charged with implementing the Bush Administration’s policy of diplomatic pressure on Iran played a weak hand surprisingly well. Despite the constraints placed on them—particularly their inability to offer significant positive incentives to Iran or to other key international actors to secure their cooperation—they devised novel financial sanctions that caused real pain in Tehran.” (p. 2).

  • [3] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “Despite these accomplishments, the Bush Administration’s approach was wearing thin before the president left office. Although battered, Tehran has so far withstood the international pressure and has made steady progress toward acquiring a nuclear capability.” (p. 2).

  • [4] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “The Iranian economy is a mess, with both inflation and unemployment approaching 30 percent. Iran remains completely dependent on oil exports for its economic livelihood, but the low price of oil and projections of dramatic declines in Iranian oil production (a product of mismanagement and the inability to secure Western technology because of the sanctions) are drastically curtailing Tehran’s principal revenues.” (p. 13).

  • [5] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “Because the Iranian leadership was consistently unwilling to jettison its ideological, political, and nationalistic antipathies toward the US, it was never willing to accept American offers for better relations, most notably during 1989-1991 under the Bush 41 Administration and in 1998-2000 under the Clinton Administration.” (p. 5).

  • [6] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “Under the Iran Freedom Support Act of 2006 (and subsequent renewals), the US is authorized to provide financial and political aid to organizations promoting democracy in Iran.” (p. 105-106).

  • [7] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “The best candidate for such a role would be a broad-based opposition group with cohesiveness, some history of armed resistance, a clear leadership, and widespread popular support. Unfortunately, none of the current candidates can claim to meet all of those criteria.” (p. 116).

  • [8] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “Although Persians dominate Iran, they represent only half of the population. At least to some outside observers, Iran appears rife with ethnic unrest, and these cleavages could become the means by which the US could try to mobilize one or more insurgencies against the Islamic regime.” (p. 116).

  • [9] Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which Path to Persia? Options for a new American strategy toward Iran. The Saban Center at The Brookings Institution. “Tehran has often been harsh in its crackdowns on minority groups, many of which are concentrated away from the capital and thus are hidden from media attention.” (p. 116-117).

  • [10] Ameri, G., & Wang, J. (n.d.). How US leaders can best support protesters in Iran. The Hill. “Public diplomacy presents a variety of steps that U.S. and global leaders can take to fulfill this opportunity… Ensure that Iranian domestic social media consistently remains accessible.”

  • [11] Ameri, G., & Wang, J. (n.d.). How US leaders can best support protesters in Iran. The Hill “Speak to the Iranian people directly through the media.”

  • [12] US Department of State. (n.d.). Advancing the free flow of information for the Iranian people. “Today we are issuing a General License to advance our efforts and commitments to ensure that the Iranian people can freely access information online.”

  • [13] Hersh, S. M. (2008, July 7). Preparing the Battlefield. The New Yorker. “L ate last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.”

  • [14] Hersh, S. M. (2008, July 7). Preparing the Battlefield. The New Yorker. “The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change, and involved working with opposition groups and passing money.”

  • [15] Hersh, S. M. (2008, July 7). Preparing the Battlefield. The New Yorker. “US Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year.”

  • [16] Hersh, S. M. (2008, July 7). Preparing the Battlefield. The New Yorker. “The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong.”

  • [17] Dresen, F. Joseph (2003). The piratization of Russia: Russian reform goes awry. Wilson Center. “In 1991 a small group of Russians emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union to claim ownership of some of the world’s most valuable petroleum, natural gas, and metal deposits. This resulted in one of the world’s greatest transfers of wealth,” said Marshall Goldman… “By 1997, five of those individuals were on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest billionaires–This year, there are 17 on this list.”

  • [18] Dresen, F. Joseph (2003). The piratization of Russia: Russian reform goes awry. Wilson Center. “The new Russian government quickly embarked on a course of reforms called shock therapy, with the ultimate goal of preventing the return of communism to Russia. The policy, which was fully supported by influential Western advisors, was to immediately free price controls and privatize state-owned enterprises as quickly as possible.”

  • [19] Dresen, F. Joseph (2003). The piratization of Russia: Russian reform goes awry. Wilson Center. “Goldman argued that it was a mistake to focus only on the privatization of state sectors. ‘[The Russians], and particularly the western advisors, neglected the fact that what you were doing was privatizing, except for the small shops, large enterprises that were essentially monopolies. So what happened? You’ve turned a state monopoly into a private monopoly, but the private monopoly doesn’t operate all that much differently.’ Goldman noted that the small business sector is only 10-30 percent of Russian GDP, compared to 50 percent in the economies in the West.”

  • [20] Dresen, F. Joseph (2003). The piratization of Russia: Russian reform goes awry. Wilson Center. “The consequences of shock therapy were severe for Russia. The economy contracted by nearly 50 percent between 1991-97, and experienced hyperinflation in the early 1990s. Social dysfunction followed, with a dramatic rise in poverty, corruption, and capital flight.”

  • [21] Vanden Heuvel, K. (2007). Yeltsin—Father of democracy? The Nation. “Beginning in early 1992, Yeltsin launched the disastrous ‘shock therapy’ policies which sent the country reeling with pain. Urged upon Russia by a group of US (primarily Harvard) economists, and supported by the Clinton Administration… these policies… involved the swift elimination of most price controls and a privatization program that resulted in hyperinflation wiping out, in installments, the savings of average Russians. Roughly half of Russia’s people thus found themselves living below the poverty level.”

  • [22] Vanden Heuvel, K. (2007). Yeltsin—Father of democracy? The Nation. “In August 1998, following a number of financial dealings that victimized or failed to benefit most Russians, the government after pledging not to do so, suddenly devalued the ruble, defaulted on its debts and froze bank accounts. In effect, people’s savings were once again expropriated, this time decimating the post-1991 middle class.”

  • [23] Smith-Boyle, V. (2022). The 1990s to today: How privatization shaped modern-day Russia. American Security Project. “The answer lies in the privatization process used by the Russian government (and advocated for by the American advisors who helped them). Overall, the Russian government failed to implement protections, regulations, and a capitalist culture before attempting to privatize, leading to a chaotic and dangerous situation that allowed for ‘crony capitalism’ and the rise of Vladimir Putin.”

  • [24] Smith-Boyle, V. (2022). The 1990s to today: How privatization shaped modern-day Russia. American Security Project. “Although many of the American advisors believed an inner capitalist, or ‘economic man,’ would emerge, this belief was unfounded. Market economies, just like planned economies, are learned by the citizens and are not an inherent part of human nature. Because the Russian economy functioned as a planned economy for seventy years… Russian citizens lacked an ‘accepted code of business behavior,’ or a capitalist culture.”

  • [25] Smith-Boyle, V. (2022). The 1990s to today: How privatization shaped modern-day Russia. American Security Project. “In an attempt to mitigate this, the Russian government first decided to pursue a process called ‘shock therapy,’ a series of rapid reforms aimed at economic liberalization, stabilization, and privatization to open the economy to international trade and investment.”

  • [26] Vanden Heuvel, K. (2007). Yeltsin—Father of democracy? The Nation. “Boris Yeltsin, who died on April 23, was a towering figure in Russian political history. But was he, as so many US obituaries and editorials have described him, the ‘Father of Russian Democracy’? As though a wave of historical amnesia had swept over the media, few commentators seemed to remember that it was Mikhail Gorbachev… who launched the democratic reforms of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost.’”

  • [27] Vanden Heuvel, K. (2007). Yeltsin—Father of democracy? The Nation. “In October 1993, Yeltsin used tank cannons to destroy not only the Parliament that had brought him to power and defended him during the attempted coup of 1991 but the entire political, constitutional order of Russia’s post-Communist republic. The US government and media, with few exceptions, acted as Yeltsin’s cheerleaders.”

  • [28] Vanden Heuvel, K. (2007). Yeltsin—Father of democracy? The Nation. “In 1996, Yeltsin’s reelection campaign—financed by a handful of oligarchs including now-exiled Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky and aided by pro-Kremlin media bias and censorship—was marked by spectacular legal violations.”

  • [29] Campbell, A. (2021). The wild decade: How the 1990s laid the foundations for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Euromaidan Press. “The social impact was immense. Life expectancy fell, with up to five million excess adult deaths in Russia in 1991-2001, birth rates collapsed and both of these trends were compounded by widespread crime and trafficking.”

  • [30] Campbell, A. (2021). The wild decade: How the 1990s laid the foundations for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Euromaidan Press. “Yeltsin’s presidency remained beholden to Russia’s regional governors and the oligarchs. It fell to Putin to curtail the powers of these groups, campaigning in 2000 under the slogan ‘the dictatorship of law.’”

  • [31] Strickland, D. (2021). Overriding democracy: American intervention in Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign. Presidential Studies Quarterly. “The coming economic contraction continued almost unabated until 1999.”

  • [32] Campbell, A. (2021). The wild decade: How the 1990s laid the foundations for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Euromaidan Press. “The failures of privatization, coupled with political manipulation, undermined democracy and created fertile ground for authoritarianism. Distrust of reform and resentment toward Western policies cemented a shift away from liberal democracy, shaping the trajectory of modern Russia.”

  • [33] Singer, F. (2024, April 19). How US sanctions have affected Venezuela. El País. “Under Obama, Biden and Trump, Washington has introduced economic measures against the Maduro government.”

  • [34] Singer, F. (2024, April 19). How US sanctions have affected Venezuela. El País. “The US has once again turned to economic sanctions as a means of pressuring the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro. On Thursday, Washington reactivated the restrictions on Venezuela’s oil sector that it had lifted six months ago.”

  • [35] Singer, F. (2024, April 19). How US sanctions have affected Venezuela. El País. “This means that the so-called General License 44, which allowed Venezuela to sell its gas and crude oil in international markets, will not be renewed. But U.S. pressure — which has intensified ahead of the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela — is nothing new. It spans three White House administrations and has become progressively more complicated.”

  • [36] Singer, F. (2024, April 19). How US sanctions have affected Venezuela. El País. “In 2015, under the Barack Obama administration, the U.S. imposed its first measures on the country within the framework of the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act, which was intended to punish Venezuelans responsible for violating fundamental rights.”

  • [37] Singer, F. (2024, April 19). How US sanctions have affected Venezuela. El País. “The first economic sanctions date back to 2017. The Treasury Department, under the orders of Donald Trump, imposed restrictions on operations, transactions and negotiations between U.S. entities and persons and the Venezuelan government. This led to a policy of over-compliance in the legal departments of U.S. banks in relation to transactions involving Venezuelan citizens. That year, Venezuela defaulted on its debt payments.”

  • [38] Associated Press. (2024, December 19). US reimposes oil sanctions on Venezuela ahead of presidential election. AP News. “The Biden administration on Wednesday reimposed crushing oil sanctions on Venezuela, admonishing President Nicolás Maduro’s attempts to consolidate his rule just six months after the U.S. eased restrictions in a bid to support now fading hopes for a democratic opening in the OPEC nation.”

  • [39] Associated Press. (2024, December 19). US reimposes oil sanctions on Venezuela ahead of presidential election. AP News. “Additionally, the stiffening of sanctions doesn’t directly impact Chevron, the last major U.S. oil driller in Venezuela, which was allowed to boost shipments thanks to a license it was issued in 2022 amid concerns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would disrupt global energy supplies.”

  • [40] The Times Editorial Board. (2024). The Times view on Maduro’s Venezuela: Rogue Regime. The Times. “President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela should be leaving office. But after presidential elections in July, he simply declared himself the winner in defiance of all polling evidence.”

  • [41] The Times Editorial Board. (2024). The Times view on Maduro’s Venezuela: Rogue Regime. The Times. “It is unsurprising that voters wanted to turf Mr Maduro out. Exit polls, tally sheets and the testimony of international observers suggest that Mr González defeated him by a huge margin of about two to one in July.”

  • [42] The Times Editorial Board. (2024). The Times view on Maduro’s Venezuela: Rogue Regime. The Times. “Through mismanagement and inflationary public financing it has presided over a collapse in living standards, such that the economy contracted by roughly three quarters between 2014 and 2021, and half of Venezuelans now live in extreme poverty.”

  • [43] The Times Editorial Board. (2024). The Times view on Maduro’s Venezuela: Rogue Regime. The Times. “Mr Maduro has been president continuously for 11 years but the authoritarian socialist movement he heads has been in power for a quarter of a century. In that time, it has transformed a country richly endowed with natural resources, and possessing the most extensive proven oil reserves of any country, into a state of penury and oppression.”

  • [44] Financial Times Staff. (2024). Venezuela’s repressive election. Financial Times. “At many voting stations, the transmission of results was halted and opposition witnesses were shooed away without the tallies of votes to which they were legally entitled. Soldiers took away ballot boxes. Then the government-controlled election authority proclaimed Maduro the winner without giving a detailed breakdown of voting.”

  • [45] Financial Times Staff. (2024). Venezuela’s repressive election. Financial Times. “Less than 24 hours after polls closed, Maduro had organised official certification of his win, given a victory speech hailing his defeat of fascist and counter-revolutionary foes and unleashed the security forces to fire tear gas and live ammunition at protesters. At least 11 people have been killed.”

  • [46] Associated Press. (2024, December 19). US reimposes oil sanctions on Venezuela ahead of presidential election. AP News. “Opinion polls show most Venezuelans would eagerly boot Maduro from office if given half a chance. Numerous regional leaders, including the leftist presidents of Colombia and Brazil, have joined the U.S. in criticizing the Maduro government’s failure to abide by its commitments and allow a competitive election.”

  • [47] Financial Times Staff. (2024). Venezuela’s repressive election. Financial Times. “María Corina Machado, the main opposition leader banned from competing, and her surrogate candidate, Edmundo González, have focused on piecing together their own count from voting records collected by supporters. With access to 80 percent of the tallies, they reckon González beat Maduro by a margin of more than two to one.”

  • [48] Aitken, P. (2024, July 27). Experts sound alarm as trailing Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro warns of ‘bloodbath’ if he loses election. New York Post. “The de facto opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has galvanized the Venezuelan people to the point that both Chavistas and anti-Chavistas in Venezuela want a change.”

  • [49] Aitken, P. (2024, July 27). Experts sound alarm as trailing Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro warns of ‘bloodbath’ if he loses election. New York Post. “Opposition supporters have backed Edmundo Gonzalez, who had an overwhelming lead over the incumbent Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro heading into the weekend, according to the BBC.”

  • [50] Aitken, P. (2024, July 27). Experts sound alarm as trailing Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro warns of ‘bloodbath’ if he loses election. New York Post. “Humire on social media platform X posted polling data that showed expected results based on low or high levels of expected voter participation, in both cases showing Maduro getting around half as many votes as Gonzalez would get.”

  • [51] Congressional Research Service. (2014). Venezuela: Background and U.S. relations (Report R43239). “In 2014, the Maduro government has been facing significant challenges, including deteriorating economic conditions (with high inflation and shortages of consumer goods) and high rates of crime and violence. Most significantly, in February, student-led street protests erupted into violence with protestors attacked by Venezuelan security forces and militant pro-government civilian groups.”

  • [52] Congressional Research Service. (2014). Venezuela: Background and U.S. relations (Report R43239). “For a number of years, the US has provided democracy-related assistance to Venezuela through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy.”

  • [53] Congressional Research Service. (2014). Venezuela: Background and U.S. relations (Report R43239). “USAID’s support for such activities for Venezuela was transferred from OTI to USAID’s Latin America and Caribbean Bureau. The objectives of the assistance, according to USAID, were to enhance access to objective information and peaceful debate on key issues, and to promote citizen participation and democratic leadership.”

  • [54] Congressional Research Service. (2014). Venezuela: Background and U.S. relations (Report R43239). “In recent years, U.S. democracy assistance to Venezuela implemented by USAID amounted to $5 million in FY2011, $6 million in FY2012, and almost $5.8 million in FY2013 ($2.8 million more than the $3 million originally requested) provided through the Economic Support Fund (ESF) foreign aid funding account.”

News Articles for Brooking’s “Path to Persia” Analysis

Pollack, K. M., Byman, D. L., Indyk, M., Maloney, S., O’Hanlon, M. E., & Riedel, B. (2009). Which path to Persia? Options for a new American s

trategy toward Iran. Brookings Institution Press.  https://www.brookings.edu/research/which-path-to-persia/.

Chapters 1 & 2 U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  https://2009-2017.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/iran/jcpoa/index.htm .

Chapter 4: Trump Team Weighs Options, Including Airstrikes, to Stop Iran’s Nuclear Program. (2024, December 12). The Wall Street Journal.  https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-iran-plan-nuclear-weapons-def26f1d .

Chapter 5: Stewart, P., & Pamuk, H. (2024, October 27). How Biden pushed Israel to calibrate its strikes on Iran. Reuters.  https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-biden-pushed-israel-to-calibrate-its-strikes-iran-2024-10-27 .

Chapter 6: Saadati, S. (2022, December 10). Iran Uprising Supported by a Group of Bi-partisan U.S. Senators. National Council of Resistance of Iran.  https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-protests/iran-uprising-supported-by-a-group-of-bi-partisan-u-s-senators .

Chapter 7: Hersh, S. M. (2008, July 7). Preparing the Battlefield. The New Yorker.  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/preparing-the-battlefield

Chapter 9: U.S. Department of State. (2024, December 19). Iran Sanctions.  https://www.state.gov/iran-sanctions .

News Articles for RAND’s “Extending Russia” Analysis

Chapter 3: Economic Measures

U.S. Department of the Treasury. (2023). Fact sheet: Disrupting and degrading – One year of U.S. sanctions on Russia and its enablers. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1298

Chapter 4: Geopolitical Measures

U.S. Department of State. (2024). US announces significant military assistance for Ukraine.  https://www.state.gov/united-countries-announces-significant-military-assistance-for-ukraine-2

Chapter 5: Ideological and Informational Measures

The Verge. (2025). US sanctions Russian group over AI-generated election disinformation.  https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/1/24333522/us-sanctions-iran-russia-election-interference

Chapter 6: Air and Space Measures

Newsweek. (2023). Hypersonic missiles at center of new US arms race against Russia, China.  https://www.newsweek.com/hypersonic-missiles-center-new-us-news-arms-race-against-russia-china-2001986

Chapter 7: Maritime Measures

USNI News. (2023). U.S. destroyer operating near the Black Sea for first time since Russia invaded Ukraine.  https://news.usni.org/2023/02/03/u-s-destroyer-operating-near-the-black-sea-for-first-time-since-russia-invaded-ukraine

Chapter 8: Land and Multidomain Measures

U.S. Department of Defense. (2024). Biden announces changes in U.S. force posture in Europe.  https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3078087/biden-announces-changes-in-us-force-posture-in-europe/

Comments (2)

A
Amro · January 22, 2025

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H
Hakim · January 23, 2025

Thank you habibi!