Regime Change--Are We Bad or What?

The United States has a lot of experience with "regime change" in the past one hundred years. More than enough experience to know that we are plumb bad at it.

Let's take a grip on history.

Woodrow Wilson, a political science PhD turned politician who became president in 1912 quite explicitly sought regime change in Mexico with two invasions. Of one, at the Mexican port of Vera Cruz, he commented that he would "teach the Mexicans to elect good men." He made no comment about the second, the so-called Punitive Expedition, perhaps because he was already gearing up for the greatest regime change effort in recent history--The Great War. (That's World War I and the Geek will be posting on it shortly looking at why the current problems with Islamists and in the Mideast are the last battles of the Great War.)

Wilson's efforts to teach the Mexicans the necessity of electing "good men" as he defined it and assuring that the Great War was, as he put it, "a war to end war" were failures. The Mexicans went on electing whoever they wanted to and as we know the First World War did not put war into the trash heap of history.

Proving that regime change is a bi-partisan idea, Dwight Eisenhower sought to alter governments his administration perceived to be obnoxious. Ike wanted to change governments on the cheap so he favored "covert" actions. There was Operation AJAX which reinstalled the spine challenged Shah on the Peacock Throne. Then there was PB/Success which removed a leftest named Arbenz from his elected position as president and made Guatemala safe for the United Fruit Company. A later operation directed against Sukarno in Indonesia failed before it was out of the starting gate.

One regime change failed before it started. In Iran the Shah stayed in power for another quarter century so it may be assessed a success. Guatemala never entered the Cuban orbit at least through the present day and was a success even though liberals won't admit it.

John F. Kennedy signed onto the regime change idea in a very big way. He was much taken with the idea of covert/clandestine operations and as a result sought to alter the political situation by these means in several countries including the Congo (failed assassination attempts), the Dominican Republic (the assassination of strongman Trujillo which worked in the very short term), South Vietnam (a coup and assassination that didn't fail in the short term) and most importantly, Cuba.

After the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion (which would have failed unless the US put its own troops on the ground in large number) the Kennedy brothers sought to eliminate Fidel Castro and bring down the regime using black operations with a specific and continuing focus on killing Fidel. The attempts and plots did not end until after JFK was shot in Dallas.

Overall the many attempts at regime change failed and failed miserably. The focus on Cuba was ultimately not only a failure but specifically counterproductive. The evidence available currently without adding even a tiny bit of paranoia points at the very strong probability that JFK was killed as a form of preemptive regime change on the part of the Cuban government. A similar if slightly weaker case can be made for the proposition that the later RFK murder was also a form of Cuban facilitated preemptive regime change (or at least the Cuban form of payback's a medivac.)

Going back to the Republicans, Richard Nixon salivated after regime change in Chile. The effort was short term successful but a longer term failure as removing the leftest Allende brought a brutal, repressive and ultimately failed military dictatorship into existence.

Staying with the Republicans, Ronald Reagan took his turn at bat in the game of regime change with his vendetta against the Sandinistas. It wasn't very covert and it wasn't very smart, and it wasn't even necessary, but in the long run the regime did change. However, the change would have occurred anyway. The Sandinistas weren't that good at running a country.

George H.W Bush rejected the appeals of regime change following the success of Operation Desert Storm. (Yes, the Geek wishes that the smarts of the father were passed onto the son.)

Bill Clinton went for regime change in Serbia and ultimately succeeded at low cost to both the US and its allies as well as the target Serbs. This regime change was successful for a very special and important reason.

George W. Bush has two exercises in regime change underway. Neither has succeeded. Neither has failed. Yet. Yet.

OK. What is the moral of the story?

There are two morals.

The first is that the US should not seek a regime change unless the stakes are high enough to merit the risk of real war. Even the Kennedy brothers finally realised this in 1963 when the Administration not only directed the development but approved the final draft of OPLAN 380-63 which called not simply for the snuffing of Fidel and the landing of a Cuban "insurgent force" but followed the cosmetic Cubans with the muscle of a large US presence including all services and three divisional equivalents.

In short, regime change cannot be done on the cheap. But that isn't the most important moral. Not by a long way.

The most important moral, or, to err on the side of accuracy, the most important lesson of our history with the seductive notion of regime change is simple. Regime change won't work most of the time. It may initially appear to work as in South Vietnam. It may work in a severely limited definition of success as in Chile where the Nixon annoying leftist ended up suitably dead and his government swept away by a quasi-fascist military.

But, in the longer term and more comprehensive definition of success, regime change will work if and only if, the outsider, the agent of enforced change understands the nature and direction of the social, economic and cultural trajectories of the target country.

When and only when the outsider's efforts are aligned with the winds of internal opinion within the target country as they were with respect to our efforts in Nicaragua and Serbia will the regime change be both lasting and positive. If the US efforts work with the internal trajectories of the target country they will bring about a better state of peace almost without effort (or at least a large butcher's bill.)

So, Geek, what about Iraq and Afghanistan? Are we riding the winds or tacking hard against them?

Wait to the next post (always with the usual caveat.)