Overriding interests: Subversion as an instrument of United States foreign policy

Subversion is the concerted effort by one government to forcibly change the leadership of another by means short of war. This dissertation provides a historically interpretive, causally analytic explanation for the use of subversion by the United States in the Western Hemisphere between 1933 and 1976. The primary questions addressed are, why did subversion emerge as a viable instrument of U.S. foreign policy, and under what conditions did U.S. policymakers perceive U.S. interests would best be served by changing another country's government rather than seeking to influence its policies.;Building on the structural Marxist approach with limited state autonomy employed by Petras and Morley, this dissertation is a case-oriented investigation of the behavior of the United States over a delimited time period, in relation to a set of conditions appearing in other states. Using a variation of J. S. Mill's indirect method of difference, it examines three parallel sets of cases with different outcomes (subversion/no subversion). The paired sets are: (1) Cuba (1933) and Mexico (1938), (2) Guatemala (1954) and Bolivia (1952), and (3) British Guiana (1964) and Jamaica (1976).;All six cases demonstrate U.S. policymakers pursued state interests independent of specific economic interests. In general, policymaker perception that U.S. hegemony would have been threatened by a hemispheric regime controlled by communists advising the country's leader explains the outcome difference found between pairs in each of the three sets of cases. Promoting liberal internationalism, U.S. policy sought to change regimes controlled by foreign ideologies, and able to command the loyalty of the military.;Subversion may have become a permanent option of U.S. foreign policy after 1947 when policymakers created a new substructure of the state, with special legal and institutional arrangements, to conduct foreign policy. The national security state was designed to disguise the use of coercive foreign policy instruments, including subversion. To promote its hegemony, the United States needed regimes willing to follow its lead in the international political arena. Subversion became a relatively low-cost instrument for re-establishing such regimes.