Quote:
The paradigm is the 1953 intervention in Iran, when the CIA helped drive an elected, secular prime minister from office so the autocratic shah could be restored to power. His brutal U.S.-sponsored repression of the Iranian people finally provoked an Islamic revolution in 1979, creating an anti-American theocracy that has been a thorn in the side of U.S. presidents ever since.
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operation ajax ... kinda got the whole middle east thing rolling, and its where the term blowback first gestated ...
The phrase is believed to have been coined by the
CIA, in reference to the harmful effects to friendly forces when some weapons are used under certain conditions (for example nuclear fallout, chemical weapons, etc. used upwind from friendly troops or assets, or a torpedo circling and hitting the firing vessel,
etc.). The word is believed to have appeared for the very first time in the CIA document on the
1953 Iranian coup d'état titled "Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953."
In the
1980s, blowback became a central focus of the debate over the
Reagan Doctrine, which advocated militarily supporting resistance movements opposing Soviet-supported, communist governments. In one case, covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua would lead to the
Iran-Contra Affair, while covert support led to a
World Court ruling against the United States in
Nicaragua v. United States.
Critics of the Reagan Doctrine argued that blowback was unavoidable, and that, through the doctrine, the United States was inflaming wars in the
Third World. Doctrine advocates, principally at the conservative
Heritage Foundation, responded that support for anti-communist resistance movements would lead to a "correlation of forces," which would topple communist regimes without significant retaliatory consequence to the United States, while simultaneously altering the global balance of power in the
Cold War.