In this Article:
The United States has a long record of overt and covert attempts to promote regime change, including backing military coups and supporting political movements in other countries. While some of these efforts succeeded in replacing odious dictators and advancing democratic institutions, the vast majority of them have not. In fact, these policies often yield deleterious side effects, including civil wars, humanitarian crises, and weaker internal security. They also make Americans seem less reliable as a partner, and they tend to generate public opposition to American policy goals abroad.
In the case of Venezuela, a popular argument is that the regime is corrupt and does its people harm, and that its departure will enable the people to choose a government that has their interests at heart. While it may be in the interests of American officials to promote democracy and economic growth, relying on armed regime-change missions is not the way to go about it.
Academic research shows that, in general, armed regime-change missions rarely succeed as planned. Instead, they tend to spiral into lengthy state-building projects that often fail to achieve their desired outcomes. This reality should be reflected in the thinking of American officials as they consider whether or not to intervene militarily in countries such as Venezuela and Iran.
In his Truth Social post on June 22, President Trump floated the idea of supporting a “regime change” in Iran, noting that “If our current Regime in Iran can not MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, we will have to do something about it!” The notion of a regime-change policy has been an element of US foreign policy since the era of Woodrow Wilson. Over the past century, it has prompted the United States to engage in many armed interventions in Latin America and elsewhere to topple autocratic rulers.