The US ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, threatened to overthrow the government in Athens if it didn’t follow orders from Washington.
Referring to the contemporary collapse of Romania’s government, Guilfoyle told a Greek minister, “We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here”.
The US ambassador reportedly said this at a dinner in Athens this March, which was attended by multiple US and Greek officials, according to the Washington Post.
Guilfoyle’s remarks recalled a notorious comment from the world’s richest oligarch, Elon Musk.
In 2019, the US government backed a coup against Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist president, Evo Morales.
Musk strongly supported the putsch. On Twitter, a critic responded to the oligarch and accused the US government of “organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there”.
Musk replied, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”.
US-backed coups are not just history; they are still common today
It is quite well known that the United States constantly interferes in the internal affairs of foreign countries.
The following map shows the countries where the US has engaged in foreign military operations, according to official government data. It is the vast majority of nations on Earth.
In addition to launching incessant military interventions and wars, Washington has sponsored scores of coups d’etat against foreign governments, including many democratically elected ones.
Some of these coups are very well documented. The CIA itself has admitted that, in 1953, it organized a coup against Iran’s democratically elected government, after Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized his country’s oil reserves, challenging US and British fossil fuel corporations.
It has also been proven, using declassified documents, that the CIA overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected left-wing President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 and Chile’s democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973.
However, there are dozens more US-backed coups that are less well known.
The US government supported right-wing military coups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1961, Brazil in 1964, Indonesia in 1965, Ghana in 1966, Argentina in 1976, Venezuela in 2002, Haiti in 2004, Honduras in 2009, Venezuela again in 2019, and Pakistan in 2022, among many other examples.
Most US-backed coups have been carried out in Global South countries, but there are several examples of CIA-sponsored putsches in the West as well.
In 1967, the CIA engineered a right-wing coup in Greece, led by vehemently anti-communist military officers.
It is important to emphasize that these US-backed coups are not just a relic of history; they continue to this day.
The threat that the US ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, made to a minister in Athens this March is not just rhetoric.
Guilfoyle referred to the political crisis in Romania. That country’s government fell in May, just a few weeks after she mentioned it.
“We can do that to any country we want. We can do that here”, the US official threatened.
Guilfoyle is a close ally of Donald Trump. In fact, she was engaged to his son, Donald Trump Jr. (Their wedding was ultimately called off and they broke up.)
Moreover, although Guilfoyle is today an avowed far-right MAGA Republican, she was previously married to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who will likely be a major Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 2028 election.
The fact that Guilfoyle is comfortable threatening to overthrow foreign governments represents just how normalized imperialism is in US politics.
Imperialism has always been bipartisan in Washington, but Trump has taken it to a whole new, brazen level.
After invading Venezuela this January and kidnapping its internationally recognized President Nicolás Maduro, the US government imposed a naval blockade of Cuba, starving the country of oil in an attempt to collapse its economy and overthrow its government.
When asked about this March about his plans for Cuba, the US president proclaimed that he can do “anything I want”. Trump boasted that he may have “the honor of taking Cuba”, referring to the nation as if it were a colony.
Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva has openly warned that the US empire is trying to “colonize” his country, as Washington flagrantly meddles in its electoral process and internal politics.
