The language the US uses to talk about coups when the government approves of the coup

Daniel Larison takes a useful look at the mainstream language used to describe American military interventions, as well as coups of which the American government approves in Why Using the Right Names for Things Matters Substack 08/10/2021:

Sometimes the U.S. government chooses to pretend that coups aren’t coups, since a coup is supposed to trigger a cutoff in military aid and it is easier to deny the coup than it is to follow the law. The Obama administration’s gutless response to the 2013 coup in Egypt falls into this category. There are other times when Americans choose not to call coup by its proper name because they approve of the results of the coup. As a general rule, if a coup topples an Islamist, a socialist, or someone else considered “anti-Western,” Westerners will go to great lengths to defend the coup while simultaneously arguing that no coup occurred. In some cases, the U.S. is sponsoring the coup or supporting the coup plotters and therefore has an incentive to deny the obvious. This happened in Venezuela in 2019 when Guaido launched an ill-prepared coup attempt, and John Bolton declared that it couldn’t be a coup because Guaido had been deemed the “legitimate president” by other governments. [my emphasis]