sides may resist cooperation. Haiti’s President Aristide, for example, reneged on his promise to offer amnesty to opposition members once back in power.21 Former leaders can also capitalize on their supporters’ grievances to return to power or use them to meddle in politics back home. Liberia’s Charles Taylor continued to interfere in Liberian politics after his exile to Nigeria. His meddling later led the United States to demand his extradition for trial at the ICC.22 Finally, due to the lack of a credible foreign threat, leaders may only step down when offered a deal that effectively preserves their power. The deal the Reagan administration offered Panama’s Noriega was, according to Marlin Fitzwater, Reagan’s acting press secretary, like “getting the fox out of the henhouse, then giving him quarters next door.” Even with these inducements, Noriega refused to step down.23
Finally, the leader’s resignation is more likely to leave behind a new regime that is either unstable or uncooperative. Because states only tend to pursue the leader’s resignation when reluctant to forcibly install the external opposition, their preference for a low-cost approach may incline them to skimp on aid that the new leader needs to consolidate power. This aid can involve more than just money; foreign troops may be necessary too. For example, the United States tried to reduce its costs of using American troops to stabilize Haiti by working with the Haitian army to maintain order, even though the army had been complicit in the coup against Aristide.24 Without sufficient support from the foreign power, political instability may persist. Aristide’s efforts to reconsolidate power divided his supporters, some of whom later joined with former members of the Haitian army to oust him in 2004.25 Ultimately, the leader’s resignation often fails to address the sources of instability in the target state that precipitated regime change in the first place.
Because leader resignation is typically an option of last resort, rarely do foreign powers successfully coax leaders to step down without a fight. When leaders do step aside, their supporters have usually already defected or rebels are poised to seize power. In these cases, regime change is primarily undertaken by domestic actors. Though the foreign power may play a supporting role in negotiating the leader’s departure, these are not true instances of FIRC, because the leader would be removed regardless of the foreign power’s actions. For example, although Aristide claimed the United States ousted him in 2004, armed rebels were already on the verge of removing him from power.26
When foreign powers are primarily responsible for the leader’s resignation, their efforts tend to be aimed at helping a popular but militarily weak external-opposition group attain power. In these cases, the foreign power is often under domestic or international pressure to act but has only nonvital interests at stake and so is unwilling to bear the high military costs of directly installing the external opposition. As such, the foreign power often seeks the leader’s resignation as a quick-fix, low-cost solution to the crisis. The ouster of Haiti’s military junta in 1994 and Liberia’s Taylor in 2003 exemplify this approach. Both were largely humanitarian efforts to remove leaders accused of human rights violations. Unfortunately, as both cases also illustrate, a leader’s removal may not ensure lasting political stability.
In sum, when the external opposition lacks sufficient strength, foreign powers can pursue one of two types of partial FIRC, coups or leader resignations. Coups are more effective because some of the leader’s supporters are convinced to abandon the leader and support the new regime. When the leader resigns, in contrast, those supporters may not only lack incentive to support the new regime, but they may also retain the ability to challenge it. Accordingly, instances of successful foreign-coerced leader resignation are rare. Finally, as I explain in the next section, foreign powers pursue partial regime change only when the targeted state is not expected to rapidly gain or regain military power. Otherwise, they may persist in seeking full regime change. All told, my argument suggests the following hypotheses on partial regime change:
H1a5: When the external opposition to a targeted leader is weak and the internal opposition is strong, states seeking regime change are more likely to pursue coups in target states that are not expected to rapidly gain or regain military power.
H1a6: When the internal opposition to a targeted leader is weak and the popularly supported external opposition requires military assistance, states seeking regime change are more likely to pursue the leader’s resignation if they lack a strategic motive to use military force.
The Exception of Rival Powers
Foreign powers generally prefer to install the external opposition, when feasible, because it is the most effective way to minimize the influence of those who prefer the policies of the former regime. The high military costs of installing the external opposition, however, can be a deterrent. But there is an important exception. When foreign powers anticipate that the target could rapidly gain or regain power, they may prefer the high cost of installing a weak external opposition to the higher long-term costs of installing the potentially unreliable internal opposition. This is most likely to occur when the target state is either a defeated rival power or is expected to acquire nuclear weapons.
Foreign powers know that internal opposition members could revert to the previous leader’s policies to win greater domestic support once in power. Although the foreign power can use positive and negative incentives to ensure their compliance, this strategy presumes the target state is weak enough that the leader might respond to such incentives. Should the target state rapidly gain or regain military power, however, the costs of incentivizing the new leader’s cooperation could rise. No longer vulnerable to military pressure or in need of aid, the newly installed leader could refuse to comply and revert to the former regime’s policies. In effect, internal rivals face a commitment problem. Although they may accept the foreign power’s terms when their state is militarily weak, they may later renege on those promises once their state acquires greater military capabilities.
In theory, this commitment problem could be resolved. The foreign power could demand and enforce settlement terms that keep the target state weak in perpetuity. The disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, for example, were intended to incapacitate Germany militarily to ensure it would never again pose a threat.27 Such punitive settlements, however, will be deeply unpopular in the target state. The new leadership, therefore, has an especially strong incentive to renege on them. Consequently, the foreign power may have to take active enforcement measures, such as using its own troops to carry out the terms or to monitor the target’s compliance with them. France and Belgium, for example, occupied the German Ruhr region to force Germany’s compliance with the reparation terms following the Treaty of Versailles.28 In addition, as the memory of war recedes and concerns over new postwar threats arise, the foreign power’s own domestic public and allies may question the need for such strict enforcement measures. This was the case in the United Kingdom after World War I, where the Labour Party championed the notion that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh, particularly its reparation terms. Forcing Germany to pay them, critics of the treaty argued, could bring about the collapse of the German economy, endanger international trade, and imperil the United Kingdom’s economic recovery.29 Foreign powers may also encounter international criticism for punishing a weak adversary that can no longer pose a threat. Confronted with these political, diplomatic, and reputational costs, future policymakers may acquiesce to the target’s attempts to alter the postwar settlement. Once they do, the target state can regain its power, as Germany ultimately did after World War I, at which point the target may become too costly to coerce.
To avoid this outcome, policymakers may choose to bear the greater expense of effecting full regime change at the outset. By installing the more reliable external opposition, they can save themselves the high costs of enforcing a punitive settlement indefinitely. Indeed, the Allies’ decision to impose full regime change on Nazi Germany reflected the lessons of the post–World War I era, particularly the difficulty of enforcement. It was widely believed that failure to enforce the postwar settlement had led to Germany’s revival. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was an especially firm believer that no German leader could credibly commit to upholding a settlement that
