lol so I believe this is the 2nd or 3rd time I've been accused of "defendingNED" in the last week, which it's time for a thread~ Namely: what regime change is and isn't, and why NED conspiracies are distractions from real foreign policy issue, which is why i find them risible https://twitter.com/steelmuslim/status/1299247919359356928

(also, dude, we're mutuals, the least you can do is tag me directly, but whatever. anyways)

First, some basic facts: 1. The US has a vile, extensive history of supporting regime change, esp. during the Cold War, against democratically elected regimes, replacing them with autocrats. This was and is f-cked up and evil. 1/

2. Democracy promotion isnt purely humanitarian; it is inherently political. There's a reason NED funding for Palestine doesn't touch West Bank occupation, or why there's nothing in, say, Saudi Arabia (at least in the last 4 yrs, as far back as the database website goes rn)

what steelmuslim criticizes is my general irritation with arguments about Belarus, HK, and Thai etc. democracy protests being US-backed plots. (Apparently asking for specific proof of NED actively influence affairs is "defending NED.") 3/

The core contention is over a) what NED (and related State Department, etc.) funding represents and b) what effects it has on the legitimacy of parties, movements, and organizations that accept its funding. 4/

My issue with a lot of tankie-like arguments about NED is that they're conspiratorial--I don't think it's a *super* important org. And it doesn't really do much for you outside the very small sphere of far left twitter eager to agree with you already. 5/

Bc when you so obsessively focus on it/other USG funding, it shows an overly simplified view of world politics and detracts from important criticism that can & should be made against US foreign policy by reducing it to, in effect, "this thing I don't like is just a CIA plot" 6/

(which who knows, it might be!! but this isn't 1970 and you're gonna need some evidence besides "it has done evil things before etc.)

Naomi, while certainly not in agreement with my views on the HK protests, raises a good point here: State Dept. funds a lot of things, like LGBTQ rights orgs. Does this make them illegitimate? Or direct fronts for regime change? 7/ https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1299496108595400704?s=20

(i think i'd be great at regime change, personally, but the homophobic assholes in Langley have turned down all of my offers thus far)

The intuitive answer is "no, probably not." Like all democracies, the US govt is influenced by competing ideological interests that guide its domestic and foreign behavior. pro-democracy/ LGBT rights are two broad examples of those ideologies (which vary over time/pres) 8/

These interests can conflict within the govt too. One such case is Operation PBFORTUNE, the 1952 CIA attempt to overthrow a leftist leader elected in Guatemala. Once the Secretary of State learned of it (basically on accident) he forced the CIA to shut it all down that day 9/

(See Nick Carothers' Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala 1952-1954)

(After Eisenhower's election, though, the CIA got it's way too years later, which royally f-cked up Guatemala for decades.)

Alright so where am i going with this? the point is: NED funding in a given country is not sufficient to show sinister intent. The burden of proof falls on you to show why and how the US is instigating regime change in whatever place you're concerned with. 10/

And you can maybe do that! But focusing on NED is such a weird, weird choice. Especially as of late, NED has gravitated much more towards relatively toothless projects, according to O'Rourke in her excellent book, "Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War" 11/

In fact, the instances of regime change supported since the Cold War--Haiti 1994, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, and Syria 2012, have all been extremely overt military operations. 12/

The US has indeed funded groups went on to be influential in the Arab Spring--but Wikileaks documents show their support was usually things like social media training. Did 800+ activists in Egypt get themselves murdered by US ally Hosni Mubarak bc like, NED told them to? 13/

(see NYT 2011 for instance, its editors opting for a pretty strong choice of words in the title there lmao https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html)

so again--regime change happens, and I think it's bad 99/100 times. O'Rourke's book pretty convincingly shows though that the dominant mode of overt regime change is military coup. The US certainly has influence by nature of its status as an empire. 14/

But it does not follow from that fact that US interests--revealed conclusively, apparently, from rather small sums dispensed via NED et al.--are driving XYZ political phenomenon that may align with what the sitting administration wants to see 15/

so in conclusion: if you wanna say the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong/Belarus/wherever protestors were just the result of US influence, just say that. but just pointing to US funding and potential interest alignment for programs there is insufficient evidence 16/

for instance in Asia--why HK or Thailand, and why now? Why not the Philippines, a strategic, much less stable democracy moving towards China and with a central government much less capable of fighting back? There needs to be a plausible logic there, which seems lacking. 17/17

oh also another good part of o'rourke's book--US regime change usually a failure, and when it wasn't, usually that's bc the scale was in the support target's favors already. As the US learned in the MidEast, you can't just fiat the institutions and norms you like into existence