A "peaceful, borderless world" before Trump?

May 15, 2026

Joseph Stiglitz summarises some of the disasters caused by US President Donald J Trump. But his sentence, “Yet another nail has been added to the coffin of the peaceful, borderless world that our forebears sought to build after the Second World War”, needs comment. Unfortunately, it glosses over the fact that, since World War 2, the USA has been almost continuously at war and has covertly helped to overthrow many governments, including democratically elected ones, e.g. Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973). Under Trump, covert subversion became overt.

Here are several books exposing the USA’s covert and overt actions to overthrow governments of other countries: William Blum: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II); Stephen Kinzer: Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq; Greg Grandin: Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism; Tim Weiner: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA; John Prados: The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA’s Heart of Darkness.