Iran is pretty well-known. Reinstatement of the Shah / military coup against the Prime Minister Mossadegh. There is plenty of material out there if you want to know more
Mossadegh disbanded significant parts of the electorate presumably to set himself up for a possible dictatorship. Thats why he was arrested - for abusing the powers of his office. But your point is moot as this action doesnt even meet the definition of asymetrical warfare for the US involvement in all of this. Was the CIA involved? Sure. Was it warfare? Hell no. And since Mosseadegh had disbanded his parliment by that time, its presumably pretty hard to even claim it was a democracy at that point.
As to Congo: I specifically refer to the assassination of President Lumumba by the CIA. An involvement which has been approved as true by a parliamentary committee of the US Senate in 1975, headed by Senator Frank Church.
Lumumba was never even the President, but was rather the Prime Minister. He was removed from office by the President, but fought the dismissal. This enabled Lumumba's own military appointee of the army to stage a coup over both in a naked power grab.
Also, you are cherry picking your information as well. There are conflicting reports of the US's and CIAs involvement in Lumumbas death. There is also a senate intel oversight committee that indicates that although the CIA may have tried to kill him, it was the Belgians that finally got him, and the CIA had nothing to do with his death.
Needless to say, the facts concerning this are indeed contested and not as absolute as you would make them appear.
Lumumba wasnt killed by the CIA, but actually by a firing squad of the opposition forces commanded by a Belgian....and fwiw, a senate intelligence comittee in August of 2000 investigating the incident found that the CIA was not directly involved in his execution.
So your wrong on that one too. Again, CIA involvement in this issue doesnt even reach the level of what is considered today to be asymetrical warfare. We put no troops on the ground, had no military forces at play at all in the Congo situation.
Latin-American examples are Guatemala in the 50s and Chile in the 70s. Again those are fairly well-documented and if interested you will haven no trouble obtaining sufficient background information.
And again, both dont even come close to 'war' or even 'asymetrical warfare' as most commonly defined.
So there are two questions we face here. Is the „enemy“ a democracy? And is it „war“? The former might be debatable at times. None of my examples were stable, liberal, exemplary democracies I guess. But IMO by and large they were democratic enough to prove the "democracies don't wage war against each other"-idea wrong, if we want to call it war that is of course.
I dont think it meets the criteria of 'war' or even 'armed conflict' for that matter. It certainly wouldnt meet the criteria of asymetrical warfare as we never had our own spec ops people running covert missions against those governments.
So what does asymmetrical warfare actually mean? Two definitions I found looking for it for 10mins on google:
„Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.“
- Wikipedia
Asymmetric conflict is a “conflict involving two states with unequal overall military and economic power resources.”
- political scientist T.V. Paul in his 1994 book titled "Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers"
You will note that those are not a lot for 10 mins. That is because it seems that „Asymmetric war“ is quit fuzzy as a term.
The context of your above definitions is important. Generally its a type of warfare done where one nation cannot compete with another in open warfare, and thus has to resort to sabotage or other covert means of warfare. By that criteria the USA never really engages in asymetrical warfare since we are never going to be the weaker of two belligerant states.
In any case those two definitions certainly apply on trying to destroy a government by assassination or fueling pushes and civil wars, as the US has done to other democracies without having to fear attacks or having experienced attacks themselves.
I disagree. In fact, in your Congo example, it was the President of the country itself that removed Lumumba from office, not some covert mission of the CIA.
Here is my suggestion: Organizations/groups which try to enforce a political agenda on a country by using deadly force against the miltary and/or civilians, but without engaging in conventional warfare.
Well that's exactly what the US has done
Nope, by the simple fact that US troops were never part of the examples you give.
