From Overthrow to Blowback: How U.S. led Regime Change Has Historically Sown the Seeds of Instability and Backlash
May 15, 2025
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
How does US foreign policy sow long seeds of instability, authoritarianism, migration, and resentment? Join esteemed author and journalist Stephen Kinzer for a launch event in a two-year speaker series on the global blowback of US aggressive intervention, military actions and regime change.
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.” He spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air. Currently, he is a frequent contributor to the Boston Globe.
More about the Global Blowback series:
“Why do they hate us?” That’s the question that many US citizens express in response to political and terrorist attacks on the U.S. Many students and citizens do not understand the ways that U.S. foreign policy, particular during periods of aggressive military intervention and regime change, have sowed long seeds of instability, authoritarianism, migration, and resentment. While we in the US have a short-term historical memory or lack knowledge of historic interventions, the rest of the world has a long memory for 20th century U.S. intervention and regime change.
Central to deepening a global understanding of these events is the concept of “blowback.” The US intelligence community defines blowback as the “unintended consequences resulting from covert or direct action.” In his 2000 book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, the late Chalmers Johnson, who was a eminent scholar of Asia, former CIA consultant and self-described “cold warrior,” described the blowback concept:
Officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented [the term blowback] for their own internal use… [It] refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of ‘terrorists’ or ‘drug lords’ or ‘rogue states’ or ‘illegal arms merchants’ often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.” For example, the US covertly aided in the overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Iran in 1953, which led to the 1979 Iranian revolution and taking of the U.S. embassy and hostages –and two generations of instability.
Over the next year, WWAC will host conversations around significant anniversaries of U.S. intervention and examples of long-term consequences or “blowback.”
There is a $10 suggested donation. No one, however, will be turned away for lack of funds.
This America 250 event was the result of a collaboration with Vermont Humanities Council, Brooks Memorial Library, and Vermont Independent Media (publisher of the Commons)
