way to secure lasting peace was to transform Germany by imposing full regime change.
What made partial regime change especially unattractive to Roosevelt was that the only opposition to Adolf Hitler that stood a chance of ousting him came from within his regime. Several high-level German military officials, mainly from the Prussian aristocracy, had tried on various occasions to contact the Allies to discuss the possibility of a coup and a settlement. Roosevelt, however, steadfastly refused to deal with “these East German Junkers.”31 The Prussian elite had played a major part in making the decisions that led to World War I. Some had also initially supported the Nazi Party and advocated noncompliance with the Treaty of Versailles.32 In that context, Roosevelt saw the anti-Nazi Germans as no better than the Nazi Party. Accordingly, he refused to recognize them, insisting instead on unconditional surrender, which would allow the Allies to impose a completely reformed regime led primarily by the relatively weak external opposition.33 In short, when faced with a state expected to gain or regain power, strong states are more likely to pursue full regime change. The internal opposition is a less reliable partner that could become too costly to coerce later on.
My argument suggests the following testable hypothesis:
H1a7: When a state seeks to effect regime change in another state, it is more likely to pursue full regime change if the targeted state is expected to gain or regain military capabilities in the near future.
Estimating the Costs of Regime Change
My argument assumes actors base their choice of strategy on estimates of relative costs. I do not assume that their estimates are correct, only that any other rational actor with complete information would arrive at a similar estimate. Of course, policymakers can, and sometimes do, miscalculate. But this does not mean that miscalculation drives regime change. Indeed, by showing that even rational actors with access to complete information may choose regime change, I argue that miscalculation is not necessary for regime change to occur. More accurate cost estimates might affect the success of an operation, but they will not necessarily prevent it from occurring. Even if leaders could perfectly predict costs, this knowledge might only affect how they bring about regime change. In this section, I discuss how policymakers estimate costs, why their estimates are sometimes wrong, and why, despite a questionable record of success, states continue to pursue regime change.
How Leaders Estimate the Costs of Regime Change
The high costs and seemingly modest benefits of recent regime-change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have rightly raised questions concerning the wisdom of overthrowing foreign leaders. Regime change, however, does not always fail. Although success can be defined in a number of ways, states sometimes do achieve their primary objectives when installing foreign regimes. These objectives may include installing democratic allies, as when the United States pursued regime change in Germany, Japan, and Panama, or installing a puppet that will serve the foreign power’s interests, as when the United States toppled leaders in Chile, Guatemala, and Iran. Nevertheless, even when states achieve their central aims through regime change, their success is often qualified, at best. The United States, for example, may have turned Iran into an ally after the 1953 coup, but the CIA’s involvement inspired anti-Americanism that came to a head twenty-six years later with the Iranian Revolution. How is it then, that despite a modest record of success, policymakers come to believe regime change is the cheapest way to attain their aims?
When policymakers choose regime change, they do so on the basis of relative costs. They do not necessarily expect that regime change will be cheap but that it will be cheaper than the alternative—namely, coercing the leader into a deal. Policymakers seeking regime change may also have direct experience with that alternative, having tried to coerce or induce their targets first. If their efforts met with resistance, they may have already concluded that coercion is costly. In contrast, because the foreign power has not yet tried overthrowing the regime, its cost estimates for deposing the leader come with a wider margin of error. The long-term costs of a regime-change operation may be especially unclear. These costs can depend on events and developments that arise during the post–regime change phase, and that can be difficult to predict. Rebel leaders, for example, may turn out to be better at fighting than governing. Likewise, tactical errors that let former regime members escape or that antagonize the population could have costly consequences down the line. Even when policymakers anticipate these developments, they may overestimate their ability to manage them. This may lead policymakers to favor the more uncertain costs of regime change to the “known” high costs of coercion.
Policymakers consider more than just the relative costs when making their decisions; they also consider the relative odds of success. In this respect, policymakers may still be tempted to seek regime change, because coercion has a lackluster track record as well. Although some coercive measures may be more effective than others, the academic literature on coercion suggests its overall success rate is low.34 The case of Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević illustrates the difficulties associated with coercing foreign leaders. NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia during the Bosnian War (1992–1995) ultimately succeeded in bringing about a settlement in that conflict, but it did not deter Milošević from launching another ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo just three years later. Milošević later backed down again, but only after another NATO bombing campaign.35 Thus, like regime change, coercion is not necessarily doomed to fail, but the expense required to ensure its success can lead policymakers to seek out other options, such as regime change.
States, of course, could give up on both coercion and regime change and do nothing. But the costs of inaction can also convince policymakers that some kind of action is required. When Ugandan dictator Idi Amin ordered an invasion of Tanzania’s Kagera Salient region, Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere concluded that inaction would only encourage Amin’s aggression.36 The same was true for Vietnam, whose 1978 invasion of Cambodia was prompted by the massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians during Khmer Rouge border attacks.37 Policymakers may, therefore, opt for regime change, not because they see it as cheap and effective, but because they have concluded that leaving the leader in power is more costly and ineffective.
Why Policymakers Sometimes Get the Costs Wrong
Although policymakers do not always underestimate regime-change costs, the historical record is full of instances in which policymakers assumed erroneously that they could install a foreign leader at little cost to themselves. Policymakers are especially likely to misjudge the costs of regime change when they rely on the targeted leader’s domestic opposition for intelligence. External and internal opposition groups alike may give rosy estimates of what it will take to dislodge the leader in an effort to convince the more powerful nation to aid them. Saddam Hussein, for example, relied on the advice of exiled Iranian politicians and generals in planning Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran. Eager to recover the livelihoods they had lost, these exiles assured him that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime lacked popular support.38 Saddam thus believed his troops would be greeted as liberators, as did the administration of George W. Bush when American troops invaded Iraq twenty-three years later.
When a foreign power bases its estimates on its own intelligence and/or experience, it is less likely to be led astray by opposition groups seeking foreign assistance. In 1861, for example, Mexican conservatives petitioned the United Kingdom, Spain, and France for assistance in establishing a monarchy, but only France took up their cause. The United Kingdom’s Lord Palmerston explained that, while he believed a monarchy would be “much more stable than a Republic,” he knew that the Mexican conservatives were weak.39 When they had previously approached the British government, “it came out that they required … many millions sterling, and 20,000 European troops to give any chance of success.”40
Still, policymakers may back the domestic opposition for several reasons, even if its claims of a low-cost mission lack credibility. First, when faced with time pressure, policymakers may
