I think them “creating protest movements” is too simplistic, it’s more about cultivating sleeper cells that can hijack public discontent. From my observations the trend is this:

• The United States (now also the EU) fund various aligned NGOs in a periphery country. These pro-Western NGOs are way better funded than others and can pull off protests, media coverage, etc.
• Those countries have internal contradictions and systemic injustices, discontent rises.
• One day something triggers protests. Government violence (sometimes provoked by protesters) then leads to bigger protests.
• The pro-Western NGOs and activists are able to throw all their capital and expertise into it. They often emphasise vague feel-goods like anti-corruption and human rights that’s conducive to big-tent coalitions.
• Their neoliberal beliefs are more compatible with the status quo than more radical proposals. Lack of class consciousness and political naivete often leads to reducing the structural issues to bad actors rather than institutional biases.
• Western media and politicians put pressure too, for obvious reasons.
• If the established politicians are truly corrupt opportunists and don’t care, they can just give in and fuck off with their money to somewhere else, withdraw in the background, or switch sides.
• The new neoliberal order often ends up being the same, but with private corruption instead of state corruption and windowdressing over substantive reform.