With the crisis in Venezuela growing, many Americans wonder whether the Trump administration will pursue regime change. President Donald Trump and top officials like Marco Rubio have hinted at it. The idea is seductive, but it’s hard for a superpower to succeed at regime change without harming the population in the targeted country. It also makes it difficult to convince the targeted population that US actions are their best option.
In short, a regime change policy involves any action – covert or overt – by the United States to replace another nation’s leadership or political power structure. It includes a wide range of policies from promoting democracy to backing military coups and even engaging in armed interventions to achieve these goals.
The problem is that academic research shows that the overuse of regime change undermines the effectiveness of other tools of American statecraft and harms America’s ability to advance its foreign policy goals. It’s important to understand why this is the case before advocating for a regime change mission.
The US has pursued a number of regime-change operations since the end of the second world war. Books like Bitter Fruit and The CIA in Guatemala offer a detailed history of the era when the US engineered regime changes for more parochial interests, such as protecting the profits of the United Fruit Company from the socialist-oriented government of Jacobo Arbenz.
About the Author
