WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Baker, who served as Secretary of State from 1989 to 1992, argued that in the cases of Libya, Egypt and Iraq, the United States "should not be so quick to come in and get rid of leaders that we don’t agree with 1,000 percent of the time."
"These areas that are failed states are failed states primarily because we went in there — or at least in part — and upset the order because we didn’t like the people who were running the show," Baker told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Over the past two decades, the United States has militarily deposed the Iraqi government, and worked with its European allies to depose Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In recent years, significant portions of those countries have become ungovernable, leading to the emergence of terrorist safe-havens.
The United States also refused to support its longtime ally in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 that led to the seizure of the government by the extremist group Muslim Brotherhood.
