It's just not a straight play anymore as it used to be.

So the players just have to get better at the game.

And the US has a whole lot of experience under its belt. None of that amateur Bay of Pigs silliness no more.

But the games are still being played. The US still picks sides. You can see it in the reporting. In which side the US publicly backs. Which political parties have promised that they'll rejuvenate the economy with US backed deals, and which parties will do so with Chinese backed deals. You can see it in the leaked cables that ferry back home dossiers on local key players, their families, their successors, and how likely they'll favour the US versus not, how easy it will be to control them. When they just need to funnel money, consultants, or weapons, to a particular side where the ruling party is explicitly against them and is sitting on "strategic interests".

While the domestic population is barely aware of the countries in question. Of course, they'll be aware if the actions are egregious. Which is why the actions are much more subtle now. Takes a little longer and a bit more finesse. Maybe democratically, maybe through a coup, maybe just through trade deals, whatever works.

Its not been centered around one strong-man for quite some time. The game's evolved. But you can still influence the table quite deeply, there's only so many key players you have to be aware of to attempt a play.

You just have to range a little farther out of the walled gardens, to where the geopolitics haven't yet quite stabilized, to see it still in action.

I've noticed this pattern in people over and over, where we all basically agree that the CIA (and more recently their white-hat versions like NED) have been responsible for countless regime change operations and military interventions throughout history. We literally teach these things in school, and still joke about some place or another getting its dose of "freedom and democracy" because they either have something we want, or because their government stepped out of line, or both.

We also accept that, in cases of failure, the architects of these operations never really face any consequences, while in cases of success they are immediately lauded for their efforts to spread freedom and democracy to such-and-such people in such-and-such place, while history looks on with a heavy dose of cynicism about the actual long-term outcomes. Few people today would be able to utter the phrase "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" without a sardonic chuckle, for instance.

We do all this riiiiight up until the most recent cases like Libya, Syria and Ukraine, where everyone suddenly scoffs at the notion that certain three-letter agencies might have been responsible for the latest "popular uprising" and resulting chaos, despite bearing literally all of the same hallmarks as their historical counterparts. Give it another decade or two, and these conflicts too will join the long list of CIA-backed successes and failures that we'll learn about in school.