Whether in the form of a revolution or a military coup, regime change involves overthrowing a government. But forcible regime change is rarely a quick and cheap endeavor that produces better economic conditions or builds lasting democracy. The evidence is clear: More than 110 years of regime-change missions, from Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the 1910s to South Vietnam in the 1960s to Iraq in the 2000s, have largely failed to promote democracy or advance U.S. interests.
The main reason is that micro-level factors such as corruption and mismanagement do not always translate into regime change. The macro-level environment, which includes cultural and institutional norms, also matters. If it is already biased toward one kind of regime, then the change may be hard to trigger; for example, if a dictatorship’s oligarchy owns all the nation’s banks and the great grandchildren of its wealthier landed elites can safely diversify their assets abroad, a democratic transition may not be possible (Boix, 2003).
In addition, there are many unanticipated consequences of regime change. For example, it can create a power vacuum that gives rise to insurgencies or even civil wars. In these situations, it can be very difficult to build stability without massive, Marshall Plan-type spending. For all these reasons, despite a long track record of failure, some policymakers continue to advocate forcible regime change. They assume that such a strategy can achieve its goals more quickly and cheaply than sustained diplomacy, and they often neglect to consider the costs if they fail. Cognitive biases contribute to these assumptions and to a focus on the desirability of the goals, not the resources required to attain them.