Despite high-profile failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, some in the policy community continue to promote regime change. They argue that ousting illiberal regimes is more cost-effective than sustained diplomatic pressure and engagement, and that such operations can avoid the risks of escalation to full-scale war. While it is in the United States’ national interest to promote democracy worldwide, regime change should not be used as a tool for this purpose.
Regime change is defined as the United States’ covert or overt efforts to replace an existing foreign government with one that is more favorable to American economic and security interests. In the case of dictatorships, this often entails a switch to democracy. However, regime change policies almost always fail to deliver their intended results. For example, studies of revolutions and coup d’états have found that covert regime change efforts generally fail to remain covert, sparking blowback that undermines the success of the mission. In addition, mass uprisings are incredibly difficult to coordinate. This has been recognized since Schelling’s 1960 work on the physics of social revolution, and is reflected in a wide range of recent game theoretic studies.
More problematically, even when regime change is successful, the new leaders are rarely the compliant tools that proponents of the strategy expect. Rather than supporting American interests, they are more likely to seek their own political survival and pursue policies that harm America’s. In this respect, they are much like the recalcitrant Afghan and Iraqi leaders who were hailed as ideal post-Taliban rulers but who quickly proved uncooperative and more allied with Iran than the American officials who helped them come to power.