From Roosevelt’s ‘big stick’ to today’s Tehran strikes, intervention has been the enduring grammar of American power After a week of relentless US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran, the war in the Middle East is threatening to blow up into a major regional conflagration. There is no let-up in retaliation from Iran either. President Donald Trump has declared that Washington must have a role in choosing Iran’s next leader, dismissing the possibility of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ali Khamenei, as “unacceptable.” The conflict continues to spread, with new Israeli strikes in Lebanon and Tehran and Iranian drones hitting neighbouring Azerbaijan for the first time. For critics across the world, the spectacle evokes a familiar question about American power. The United States has long presented itself as the custodian of a ‘rules-based international order’ - an architecture built after the Second World War on principles of sovereignty, non-intervention and respect for international law. Paradoxically, the same country has repeatedly and violently intervened abroad to shape political outcomes in flagrant violation of those principles. Roosevelt’s Corollary The intellectual roots of American intervention abroad lie partly with President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1904, he articulated what became known as the ‘Roosevelt Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted that the United States could intervene in the affairs of Latin American states to stabilise economic or political disorder. Roosevelt presented this doctrine as a form of international policing rather than imperial expansion. In practice, however, it legitimised repeated American military involvement across the Caribbean basin, from occupations in Haiti and Nicaragua to interventions in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Washington justified these actions as ‘necessary’ to prevent European creditors from intervening in the Western Hemisphere. But critics saw in it the consolidation of American strategic and commercial dominance in its own backyard. Whatever the motive, the Roosevelt Corollary established a durable precedent of intervention framed as stabilisation. Operation Ajax The modern history of regime-change operations often begins in Tehran. In August 1953 the CIA and Britain’s MI6 executed Operation TPAJAX, overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, alarming both Britain and Washington. The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower justified intervention as a Cold War necessity, fearing instability that might open the door to Soviet influence. The coup restored the authority of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. His increasingly autocratic rule endured for more than two decades until it was swept away by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. For many Iranians, the memory of 1953 remains a foundational grievance against Washington. Cold War Laboratory The pattern was quickly replicated elsewhere. In 1954 the CIA orchestrated Operation PBSUCCESS, which toppled Guatemala’s reformist president Jacobo Árbenz whose land reform programme threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company, a powerful American corporation with deep influence in Washington. Officially the intervention was framed as a defence against communist expansion. In reality, the ideological and commercial motives were deeply intertwined. Sovereignty, once again, proved secondary to American strategic calculation. Latin America rapidly became the principal theatre of Cold War interventions. In April 1965, amid political turmoil in the Dominican Republic, the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson launched Operation Power Pack. More than 22,000 American troops were deployed to prevent what Johnson feared might become “another Cuban Revolution”. The official justification was the protection of American citizens and the restoration of order. But the real objective was to prevent the return to power of the reformist president Juan Bosch. By the 1980s, intervention had morphed into targeted military strikes aimed at disciplining hostile regimes. In October 1983 the administration of Ronald Reagan launched Operation Urgent Fury, invading the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. The immediate trigger was a violent coup within the island’s Marxist government that resulted in the killing of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Washington justified the invasion as a rescue mission for American medical students and a step to prevent the island from becoming a Soviet-Cuban outpost in the Caribbean. Three years later Reagan authorised another dramatic strike. In April 1986 U.S. aircraft bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya under Operation El Dorado Canyon, targeting Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. The raid was presented as retaliation for Libyan involvement in a terrorist bombing of a Berlin nightclub frequented by American soldiers. Gaddafi survived, but the attack signalled Washington’s willingness to use precision air power to punish adversarial regimes. Credibility crisis The end of the Cold War did little to diminish the pattern. In December 1989 George H. W. Bush ordered Operation Just Cause, sending American forces into Panama to remove the military ruler Manuel Noriega, a one-time CIA asset. Washington justified the invasion as necessary to protect U.S. citizens, defend democracy and combat narcotics trafficking. Critics saw a blatant violation of sovereignty and an extraordinary demonstration of American extraterritorial power. The most controversial intervention came in 2003 when George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, accusing Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations Security Council did not authorise the use of force. When inspectors later failed to find the alleged weapons, the credibility of American intelligence suffered a severe blow. The war destabilised Iraq, empowered Iran and contributed to the rise of Islamic State. Even humanitarian interventions have often drifted towards regime change. In 2011 NATO aircraft intervened in Libya after the United Nations Security Council authorised action to protect civilians during the uprising against Gaddafi. The campaign eventually destroyed the regime. Gaddafi was captured and killed near Sirte in October 2011. Yet Libya soon descended into factional conflict, becoming a battleground for rival militias and foreign powers. From the American viewpoint, each intervention has been dressed up in the language of ‘necessity’ - Communism yesterday, terrorism today, regional stability tomorrow. This has normalised an extraordinary idea that the United States may legitimately decide the political fate of other nations. From Guatemala City to Tripoli, from Panama City to Baghdad, that idea has toppled governments, ignited wars and created grievances that endure for generations. As American aircraft once again pound Tehran and Washington debates who should rule Iran next, the world is witnessing yet another instance where the self-proclaimed guardian of the ‘rules-based order’ is showing itself to be one of its most prolific rule-breakers. History suggests that the habit is far from broken. The Noriega Affair Well before Iraq, Venezuela and Iran, perhaps no other episode demonstrates more clearly the swiftness of the United States in shifting gears from pressure to outright regime change than the 1989 invasion of Panama. Like today’s ‘Epic Fury,’ that invasion had a similarly bombastic name – ‘Operation Just Cause.’ Reeking with aggressive moral certainty, that intervention also demonstrated how swiftly Washington could transform a former ally into a target, and then deploy overwhelming force to remove him. Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military ruler, intelligence chief and long-time collaborator with the Central Intelligence Agency had been a useful asset for years. During the Cold War, he assisted American intelligence operations across Central America, particularly against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Yet by the late 1980s, the relationship had soured. U.S. prosecutors indicted Noriega in 1988 on charges of narcotics trafficking and money laundering, turning their erstwhile intelligence partner into a criminal fugitive. Tensions escalated rapidly as Noriega annulled the results of Panama’s 1989 presidential election after Opposition candidate Guillermo Endara appeared to win by a landslide. The spectacle of Endara being beaten by regime supporters in the streets of Panama City provided Washington with a vivid propaganda moment. Meanwhile Noriega’s National Assembly declared him the country’s ‘maximum leader’ and announced that a state of war existed with the United States. President George H. W. Bush, himself a former CIA director, responded with force. On December 20, 1989 roughly 24,000 American troops launched Operation Just Cause, the largest U.S. combat operation since the Vietnam War. Airborne troops descended on the Rio Hato airbase while Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 4 stormed Paitilla Airport in a daring night raid to destroy Noriega’s private jet - part of the sub-operation Operation Nifty Package designed to prevent his escape. Across Panama City, the bombardment was intense as poor neighbourhoods like El Chorrillo, densely packed wooden districts near the Panamanian Defence Forces headquarters, were set ablaze during the assault. Entire blocks burned through the night as American gunships and AC-130 aircraft pounded military targets embedded in civilian areas. After several days of evasion, Noriega took refuge inside the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City. What followed was one of the strangest episodes in modern military history. American troops surrounded the compound and subjected it to psychological warfare, blasting rock music through massive loudspeakers day and night. On January 3, 1990 Noriega surrendered and was flown to Miami to stand trial in a U.S. federal court - a foreign head of state captured in his own capital and extradited to another country to face criminal charges. The human cost of the invasion remains disputed. Official figures suggest more than 300 civilians and around 200 Panamanian soldiers were killed, alongside 23 American troops. Independent estimates range far higher, with some investigators suggesting thousands of civilian deaths and the displacement of roughly 20,000 residents after neighbourhoods like El Chorrillo were destroyed. Critics argued that the operation violated Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of states. Supporters countered that Noriega’s regime had itself undermined legality and threatened regional stability. The debate would foreshadow later arguments about ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the limits of sovereignty. The UN General Assembly impotently condemned the invasion as a “flagrant violation of international law,” though a similar resolution in the Security Council was blocked by the United States and its allies. The irony that the United States had helped cultivate Noriega’s power before deciding that he had become a liability after his usefulness evaporated was lost on no one. Above the Law The latest American strikes on Iran, justified in Washington as a pre-emptive act of security, have revived an old and uncomfortable debate about the architecture of global order. For decades, the United States has presented itself as the chief guardian of a ‘rules-based international system.’ Yet when the rules threaten to constrain American power, Washington has often preferred to step outside them. This paradox is not merely theoretical. It is embedded in the United States’ uneasy relationship with international law, right from its refusal to join the International Criminal Court to its abandonment of major arms-control treaties and the increasingly muscular rhetoric of its current leadership. The most striking illustration is Washington’s relationship with the Rome Statute of the ICC, the treaty that established the permanent tribunal to prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The United States helped negotiate the court in the 1990s. President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in December 2000. Yet he never submitted it to the Senate for ratification, citing concerns that American soldiers operating abroad might face politically motivated prosecutions. His successor, George W. Bush, went further. In May 2002 Washington formally withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute in an unprecedented diplomatic gesture that effectively declared that the United States would not recognise the court’s jurisdiction. Congress soon reinforced this stance through the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which authorised the U.S. government to use “all means necessary” to free American personnel detained by the court. European diplomats mockingly dubbed the law the “Hague Invasion Act.” The nickname captured the essence of American exceptionalism that the world’s most powerful democracy insisting that international justice should apply everywhere - except to itself. The irony has grown sharper in recent years. Washington has strongly supported ICC investigations into alleged war crimes in Ukraine, particularly those involving Russian forces. Yet the United States continues to shield its own officials and military personnel from the same tribunal. The pattern extends well beyond the ICC. Over the past two decades the United States has steadily dismantled pillars of the Cold War arms-control system. In 2002 the administration of George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti‑Ballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of nuclear stability signed in 1972 by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev. The treaty limited missile-defence systems in order to preserve the delicate balance of nuclear deterrence between Washington and Moscow. Bush argued that the strategic environment had changed after the Cold War and that the United States needed freedom to build missile defences against ‘rogue states’ such as North Korea and Iran. Critics warned that abandoning the treaty would weaken decades of arms-control architecture and encourage a new technological arms race. The warning proved prescient. In 2019, Donald Trump (then in his first term) withdrew from another landmark agreement, the Intermediate‑Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the treaty had eliminated an entire category of nuclear missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. Washington accused Russia of violating the treaty by developing a prohibited missile system. Moscow denied the allegation and responded by suspending its own obligations. The collapse of the INF treaty marked the effective end of one of the Cold War’s most celebrated arms-control achievements. The most striking manifestation of American exceptionalism today lies not in legal technicalities but in the tone of Washington’s geopolitical rhetoric. Trump has revived a brand of muscular territorial ambition rarely heard from modern American leaders. He has openly suggested that the United States should acquire Greenland, even threatening economic pressure on Denmark to force a sale. In equally blunt language he has spoken about ‘reclaiming’ the Panama Canal, asserting that the strategic waterway should return to American control. The canal, built by the United States in the early twentieth century, was transferred to Panama under the Torrijos–Carter Treaties of 1977 and fully handed over in 1999. Such statements evoke an earlier era of American foreign policy, when the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary justified interventions across the Western Hemisphere. The refusal to join the ICC, the withdrawal from arms-control treaties and the increasingly expansionist rhetoric reinforce the perception that the United States views international law as a strategic bludgeon to be used at will. The contradiction is especially stark in moments like the current confrontation with Iran. Washington invokes international norms to condemn Iranian actions across the Middle East. Yet its own military operations and geopolitical ambitions proceed without the same legal scrutiny. More than seventy-five years after the creation of the United Nations, the international system still rests on an unresolved tension: the gap between the rules that govern the world and the power of the country that helped write them.
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