rather than take the time to cultivate reliable intelligence. For Napoleon III, the American Civil War created a unique opportunity to install a friendly government in Mexico at a time when the United States could not afford to counter a French invasion.41 Second, if relations between the stronger state and its target have been poor for some time, the stronger state may have withdrawn its representatives, inhibiting its ability to gather intelligence. Without a reliable intelligence network, the foreign power may be forced to rely on third parties, such as the opposition, for its information.
Third, even when the foreign power retains its representatives in the target state, these individuals are likely to have close ties to the opposition if their own government has been at odds with that of the target government. As a result, the information they collect may come directly from the opposition, whether or not policymakers back home realize it. The French minister in Mexico, Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, staunchly opposed the government of Benito Juárez. He played an influential role in convincing Napoleon III that the majority, “if not almost all” Mexicans, looked forward to a European intervention.42 Mexican representatives protested that Dubois not only had never left the capital, and thus could not comment on opinion in the countryside, but also had hosted reactionaries in his home and was influenced by “an exceptional and eccentric minority.”43
Another reason policymakers may underestimate the costs of regime change is that they may overestimate their ability to manage the political turmoil that led to regime change in the first place. The stability and cooperation of the new regime, much like the former one, depends on whether it can eliminate or co-opt its opposition. This opposition could come either from remnants of the former regime or from the same group that plagued the former leader. In Vietnam, for example, the Buddhist activists, whose confrontations with Diem had precipitated the 1963 coup against him, continued to agitate against the post-Diem leadership. The attempts by successive governments to deal with this powerful political force helped inspire many of the coup attempts that followed Diem’s overthrow.44
If the foreign power fails to provide the new leadership sufficient aid to manage these threats, the leader may attempt to survive by buying off the opposition and granting it concessions contrary to the foreign power’s interests. In Afghanistan, for example, former President Hamid Karzai refused to sign a long-term security agreement with the United States, released Taliban militants, and accused American forces of war crimes. It was later revealed that Karzai had been negotiating in secret with the Taliban, whose threat NATO forces had been unable to eliminate.45 Thus, the very domestic instability that inspired the foreign power to pursue regime change in the first place can complicate its attempts to install a stable, cooperative government.46
The task of eliminating or co-opting the new leader’s opposition may be even more difficult when the foreign power seeks to install a democracy. Not only must the new leader build political coalitions across a society that may already be deeply divided, but also democratic norms may limit the leader’s ability to crack down on opposition. Potential opponents to the new regime could take advantage of the greater freedoms a democracy allows, as well as its constraints on the use of force, to organize opposition to it. Even attempts at co-opting the opposition may prove difficult. The opposition may reject these offers if it anticipates it can seize full power simply by waiting for the foreign power to withdraw. In Vietnam, post-Diem rulers avoided cracking down on the Buddhist movement as Diem had done, for fear of suffering the same fate. American policymakers ultimately grew frustrated by the restraint Vietnamese leaders showed and came to favor rulers whose methods were similar to Diem’s.47 Thus, when foreign powers seek to install democracies, their political goals may conflict with their goal for a stable government. The greater the tension between these two aims, the more likely the foreign power is to encounter unexpected costs as it tries to reconcile them.
States may also underestimate costs when imposing democracy because they tend to assume the target population will welcome their efforts. And, indeed, the population may welcome regime change in the wake of a humanitarian crisis or after years of a brutal dictator’s rule. But once that dictator is gone or the crisis is over, opposition groups may begin vying for political power. Even in the relatively successful case of Panama, the heads of the new democratic government began fighting among themselves within a year of Noriega’s removal.48 Domestic groups may not be the only ones to cease cooperation once the dictator is gone or the crisis ends. The foreign power may also lose interest in making the kind of long-term investment necessary to build a viable democratic regime once domestic or international pressure to act has abated. In sum, the foreign power’s actions during the course of a regime change operation can affect just how much the actual costs and success of the operation diverge from expectations.
How Past Failures Affect Future Endeavors
Although policymakers may err in their cost estimates, this does not necessarily mean that they would have avoided regime change had their estimates been more accurate. Even when the costs of regime change are high, policymakers may still regard the costs of a settlement or inaction as still higher. For this reason, previous failed attempts at regime change may simply prompt policymakers to adopt a different approach to regime change rather than to abandon it altogether. They may, for example, forsake their goal of establishing democracy and settle for a “strongman” capable of providing stability, as the United States did before withdrawing from Vietnam. Or, they may swap their military tactics for new ones. The First Anglo-Afghan War, for example, ended disastrously for the United Kingdom in 1842. But in 1878, British India’s viceroy, Lord Lytton, launched another attempt to install a pliant Afghan emir, believing he could avoid the mistakes of his predecessor by using more competent military commanders.49
Past failures can also prompt the foreign power to shift from partial to full regime change or to change its level of force. The memory of the Vietnam War, for example, did not prevent American leaders from attempting regime change in the decades that followed. Instead, the experience in Vietnam changed how they pursued it. With the exception of Grenada, the Reagan administration looked to topple foreign governments by funding insurgents indirectly rather than directly.50 In 1977, Vietnam abandoned its indirect regime change strategy, after failing to generate an internal uprising against Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. Instead, Hanoi adopted a direct strategy focused on an invasion. The Vietnamese foreign minister insisted that there were still at least nine battalions and twenty provincial leaders in Cambodia sympathetic to Hanoi who would assist in the invasion.51 Simply put, although policymakers’ cost estimates are sometimes wrong, more accurate ones would not necessarily cause them to forsake regime change. As long as the targeted leader appears not only resistant, but also susceptible to overthrow, FIRC will remain a constant temptation.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that whether the foreign power seeking regime change replaces the target state’s institutions or leader depends on the relative strength of the external and internal opposition to the targeted leader. States seeking regime change prefer to align with strong external opposition groups because those groups are more willing to accept the foreign power’s terms. When the external opposition to the targeted leader is weak, however, the foreign power may instead encourage the leader’s internal rivals to launch a coup. Although foreign powers can also pressure the leader to step down, resignation is less likely to resolve the political instability in the target state. For this reason, it tends to be an option of last resort, pursued when the external opposition has popular support but requires direct military aid, which the foreign power is unwilling to provide. The only instance in which the foreign power might pursue full regime change despite a weak external opposition is when the target is expected to rapidly gain or regain military power. Because the internal opposition can be a less reliable ally, the foreign power is often reluctant to install it when the target state may recover the means to resist militarily.
Table 2. Hypotheses on Foreign-Imposed Regime Change
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The Effects of Domestic Opposition
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