Regime change is when a foreign power, overtly or covertly, intervenes to attempt to alter the government of another country. This could be by supporting a coup d’etat, providing political and military aid or even launching armed attacks on that government to topple it. This policy has been used multiple times by the United States, dating back to the invasion of Grenada and Panama and continuing through the 2003 Iraq war. While regime change policies may sound appealing, they are rarely worth the risk and have a bad track record.
When America pushes for regime change in other countries, it is usually based on a desire to promote democracy and improve human rights. But regime change can actually harm these goals by associating the U.S. with the repression of national aspirations and independence movements. Moreover, overuse of this tool undermines other foreign policy tools that are more effective at promoting democracy and improving human rights and it often leads to blowback from the host country’s population in the form of civil war, regional instability and the empowerment of factions as or more dangerous than those being removed.
When policymakers argue that a foreign government needs to be overthrown, it is often because they believe that that regime is corrupt and does harm to its own people, or that the local population would support a more democratic government that has their interests at heart. However, that ignores the fact that imposed leaders are often faced with a domestic audience that wants different things from their own government, and taking actions that please one will alienate the other. This has been the case in Libya, Yemen and more recently in Syria where the CIA and other foreign powers supported rebels seeking to overthrow Assad but ended up with more conflict and violence.
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