![[OC] Animated history of US interventions and military bases worldwide, from 1900 to today](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/A5XIs3vu37sROADfaTDrylpjPzxjbOdU-1TX5HJ6C_c-1024x538.png "[OC] Animated history of US interventions and military bases worldwide, from 1900 to today")
Scrub through 125 years of coups, invasions, proxy wars, puppet regimes and embargoes, on a map with historically accurate shifting borders. You can zoom in on regions with three presets or a free pan & zoom mode, toggle off/on intervention types or military bases if you want, and hover over things to see descriptions. Click to pin tooltips.
A little further down on the page there's also a stacked bar chart of interventions by decade, with the nine subcategories of interventions I used.
If you see any way to improve the data or presentation, let me know! There's a feedback form at the bottom of the page.
Posted by metaphorician
5 Comments
There are many sources used. I list the main ones at the bottom of the page, and the others are linked to from the tooltips on the specific bases or interventions. The three most important ones are [David Vine’s research on US military bases](https://aura.american.edu/articles/online_resource/Lists_of_U_S_Military_Bases_Abroad_1776-2021/23857422?file=41851266), the [Congressional Research Service report on uses of armed forces abroad](https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf) for the military interventions, and [CShapes](https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/) from ETH Zürich for the historical political borders.
This was made over a couple of weeks in a careful iterative process with Claude Opus 4.5 as both a coding tool and a research assistant, a process that worked so well that I can see myself making exploratory visualizations about topics I’m curious to learn more about as a main hobby.
The main visualization tools are d3-geo and Canvas. The shifting historical borders were precalculated as Path2D objects to make things snappy.
does dark gray mean an unrecognized state? between 1932 and 1933 saudi arabia changes from dark gray to a slightly lighter gray. i see in 32 it was officially pronounced the kingdom of SA.
very cool graphic, not sure why it’s not being upvoted more!
Korean War vs Chinese Forces? But nothing about US WW2 intervention against Vichi France. Also “Morales forced to resign after disputed election. US quickly recognized interim government.” recognizing a government counts as a coup? What about recognizing the new governments of Syria or the nations in the Sahel. Honestly, gorgeous visualisation but seemingly subjective data. I’ve looked at the sources in your comments.
0% surprised to see this post isn’t getting any traction.
Feddit moment.
I suggest adding a third entry on Mexico: [Mérida Initiative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9rida_Initiative) from 2007 to 2021, which in turn leaded to several gunwalking scandals (Operation Fast and Furious as the most prominent), proxy war on cartels and overall social instability (sharp rise in high-impact crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, extortion).
edit: even a fourth (mexican [Dirty War](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mexican_Dirty_War) against southern guerrillas and “communists” from 1964 to 1982; former presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría [were CIA assets while in office](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB204/index2.htm)).