The U.S. tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War

The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that Russia intervened covertly during the presidential election to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy. They based this assessment on the discovery that Russian security agencies had hacked the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — and had released selected Democratic documents to WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton’s candidacy.

1. Between 1947 and 1989, the United States tried to change other nations’ governments 72 times

That’s a remarkable number. It includes 66 covert operations and six overt ones.

Of course, that doesn’t excuse Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. These 72 U.S. operations were during the Cold War — meaning that, in most cases, the Soviet Union was covertly supporting anti-U.S. forces on the other side. However, a look at these U.S. actions allows us to survey the covert activities of a major power, so we can glean insight into such interventions’ causes and consequences.