A database of US foreign policy actions since 1945: military interventions, economic sanctions, support for authoritarian regimes, and their consequences under international law.
Death tolls are shown as ranges with source citations. Debated claims are flagged as contested. Each visualization includes a methodology panel with sourcing details.
Full bibliography with every cited source →
This dataset was assembled by cross-referencing multiple academic datasets, official records, and investigative reporting, then curating events into a single structured format with sourced death toll ranges, geographic coordinates, and event descriptions.
The interventions page draws on two peer-reviewed datasets as reference points:
Each dataset has a different scope. MIP covers military force but excludes most CIA-led covert operations, election interference, and proxy wars conducted through intelligence channels. O'Rourke covers covert regime change but excludes non-regime-change military actions and ends at 1989. This project includes both categories and extends coverage to the present. From O'Rourke's dataset, this project incorporates cases that involved direct action against a government (coups, armed support for insurgents, assassination programs) but not cases limited to election funding or propaganda, which did not involve the threat or use of force.
Of the 83 events on the interventions page, 55 overlap with MIP's use-of-force cases (hostility levels 4–5). The remaining 28 are predominantly covert operations, coups, and proxy wars that fall outside MIP's military-force definition. Many of these appear in O'Rourke's regime change dataset.
All death tolls are shown as ranges (low–high). Low estimates typically reflect documented or confirmed deaths. High estimates include indirect deaths from infrastructure destruction, displacement, and disease, following the methodology used by the Costs of War Project at Brown University. Where no credible estimate exists, the field is left blank. Estimates flagged as "contested" indicate that either the death toll or the degree of US responsibility is debated among scholars.
Each visualization page includes a Methodology button with details specific to that page:
This project has no institutional funding. If you find it useful, consider supporting it. I'm just a PhD student :)
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