Whether trying to achieve political, security, economic, or humanitarian goals, regime change usually fails and produces deleterious side effects. For example, the US-led overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan unleashed two decades of guerrilla warfare and state collapse, while the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq left the country rife with militias and jihadists.
Yet despite this poor record, many policymakers continue to support forcible regime change. Two common mindsets contribute to this: 1) a desire to punish or reward governments and 2) a tendency to ignore the full costs of military operations. Both of these assumptions are flawed and can lead to ill-advised policies.
The first assumption is flawed because it assumes that there is a clear and compelling case that the target government is guilty of gross violations of human rights. There are, however, few cases where this is true. Even if there were, such cases would require extensive non-military means of persuasion or pressure before resorting to covert intervention to assist the opposition.
The second assumption is flawed because it overlooks the fact that foreign regime-change missions often spiral into lengthy nation-building projects, and may fail to achieve their predetermined goals. Moreover, they can also create conditions that are favorable for further authoritarian rule. For example, in nineteenth-century Latin America, democracy was less likely to spread when inequality and the vulnerability of wealth to expropriation were high. In those circumstances, authoritarianism could provide a stable alternative to democracy.
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