Since 1953, the US has either attempted or carried out 80 coups since 1953. That is more than one per year.
To place the coup in Ukraine in historical context, this is at least the 80th time the United States has organized a coup or a failed coup in a foreign country since 1953. That was when President Eisenhower discovered in Iran that the CIA could overthrow elected governments who refused to sacrifice the future of their people to Western commercial and geopolitical interests. Most U.S. coups have led to severe repression, disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, corruption, extreme poverty and inequality, and prolonged setbacks for the democratic aspirations of people in the countries affected. The plutocratic and ultra-conservative nature of the forces the U.S. has brought to power in Ukraine make it unlikely to be an exception.
Noam Chomsky calls William Blum's classic, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, "Far and away the best book on the topic." If you're looking for historical context for what you are reading or watching on TV about the coup in Ukraine, Killing Hope will provide it. The title has never been more apt as we watch the hopes of people from all regions of Ukraine being sacrificed on the same altar as those of people in Iran (1953); Guatemala(1954); Thailand (1957); Laos (1958-60); the Congo (1960); Turkey (1960, 1971 & 1980); Ecuador (1961 & 1963); South Vietnam (1963); Brazil (1964); the Dominican Republic (1963); Argentina (1963); Honduras (1963 & 2009); Iraq (1963 & 2003); Bolivia (1964, 1971 & 1980); Indonesia (1965); Ghana (1966); Greece (1967); Panama (1968 & 1989); Cambodia (1970); Chile (1973); Bangladesh (1975); Pakistan (1977); Grenada (1983); Mauritania (1984); Guinea (1984); Burkina Faso (1987); Paraguay (1989); Haiti (1991 & 2004); Russia (1993); Uganda (1996);and Libya (2011). This list does not include a roughly equal number of failed coups, nor coups in Africa and elsewhere in which a U.S. role is suspected but unproven.
The disquieting reality of the world we live in is that American efforts to destroy democracy, even as it pretends to champion it, have left the world less peaceful, less just and less hopeful. When Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, at the height of the genocidal American war on Iraq, he devoted much of his acceptance speech to an analysis of this dichotomy. He said of the U.S., "It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis… Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever."
This disturbing statistic has plenty of bearing on Ukraine. We can argue until we're blue in the face about the US role behind the coup in Ukraine. But no reasonable person can argue that at the very least, the US facilitated it given the Nuland tape even if it had the support of the people due to Yanukovych's brutality towards his own people.
The US has nobody to blame but themselves for the rise of Putin. By making the coup as a weapon of choice for the last 60 years, the US has allowed Putin to stay in power by pointing to his political opponents as agents of the US. And they have allowed him to pose himself as the champion who successfully stood up to Western bullying. Let's just use the recent accusations of Russian troops being in Eastern Ukraine. All Putin has to do is point to the recent trip by the American CIA man to Ukraine as "evidence" that he's not doing anything that we're not doing. After all, it was not like the CIA person and his Ukrainian counterparts were sitting together and having coffee.
The US has made some headway in regaining the goodwill around the world lost due to Bush and his war of aggression that killed a million people in Iraq. But it must do more; it must renounce regime change as a weapon. After all, nobody would appreciate it if Al-Qaeda were to sneak into this country to plot the takeover of our federal government. And the US must stop sending military aid to foreign dictators unless there is a direct threat from terrorism or Nazism, in which sending aid to Stalin was the lesser evil.
The weapon of regime change seemed like an attractive short-term tool to get rid of leaders who were too independent. But this country is no safer than it was back in 1953; in fact, it is less safe. Iran, whom we toppled in 1953 to start things off, fell in 1979 as a direct result and they have been our enemies ever since. Now, countries like Russia and Iran can brutally torture and repress dissidents on the "grounds" that they are somehow agents of the CIA. The more we use it as a weapon, the more that we will make enemies and set up the next 9/11 attack or Boston Marathon bombing. It is no accident that Putin referred to our history of regime change operations in his Crimea speech and predicted that he might be next.
Yanukovych was a disaster for Ukraine. But he was still the democratically elected President, like many other leaders who we overthrew or facilitated the overthrow of. The proper venue for dealing with Yanukovych would have been the next election, which was coming up. Just like the proper venue for dealing with Hoover, who fired on the Bonus Army marchers, was the 1932 election, in which he was defeated by almost a 2-1 margin. While the people have the right to rise up against a tyrant like Yanukovych, who fired on his own people, the US has no business facilitating such a move due to the massive power vacuum that such uprisings create after the dictator is overthrown, such as what happened in Iraq. The only exception should be when the world community determines that a situation is so horrific that action is necessary to prevent another Rwanda, such as Libya.