With the growing crisis in Venezuela, many Americans are discussing whether President Trump should seek to overthrow the regime of Nicolás Maduro. While the administration has downgraded democracy promotion, high-level policy discussions have continued, and regime change remains a viable option.
The term “regime change” refers to the deliberate effort by the United States or its allies to remove the leadership or political power structure of another country, through any number of policies that fall short of full-scale war. This effort may involve diplomatic, economic and informational tools as well as military operations. The concept of regime change has long been central to American foreign policy, with its proponents arguing that a more democratic world makes America safer and that forcing odious regimes from power is the right thing to do.
Yet the idea of regime change has always come with a host of risks. The most serious is that the efforts to overthrow governments that do not serve US interests can backfire. In the case of dictators like Slobodan Milosevic, it took two decades for Serbia to recover from the coercive airstrikes and political upheaval that overthrew him. And while the so-called color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan brought about the removal of Russian-leaning autocrats, these countries remain fractious and unstable.
The other risk is that armed regime-change missions rarely succeed as intended and often have unintended consequences. A growing body of academic research demonstrates the paucity of cases in which regime-change efforts produce the desired outcome of supplanting an odious regime and advancing American security and humanitarian interests. Instead, as this literature shows, covert regime-change activities are more likely to obstruct American goals and harm other tools of statecraft that support the American-led international order.
About the Author
