The Exception of Rival Powers
Foreign powers generally prefer to install the external opposition, when feasible, because it is the most effective way to minimize the influence of those who prefer the policies of the former regime. The high military costs of installing the external opposition, however, can be a deterrent. But there is an important exception. When foreign powers anticipate that the target could rapidly gain or regain power, they may prefer the high cost of installing a weak external opposition to the higher long-term costs of installing the potentially unreliable internal opposition. This is most likely to occur when the target state is either a defeated rival power or is expected to acquire nuclear weapons.
Foreign powers know that internal opposition members could revert to the previous leader’s policies to win greater domestic support once in power. Although the foreign power can use positive and negative incentives to ensure their compliance, this strategy presumes the target state is weak enough that the leader might respond to such incentives. Should the target state rapidly gain or regain military power, however, the costs of incentivizing the new leader’s cooperation could rise. No longer vulnerable to military pressure or in need of aid, the newly installed leader could refuse to comply and revert to the former regime’s policies. In effect, internal rivals face a commitment problem. Although they may accept the foreign power’s terms when their state is militarily weak, they may later renege on those promises once their state acquires greater military capabilities.
In theory, this commitment problem could be resolved. The foreign power could demand and enforce settlement terms that keep the target state weak in perpetuity. The disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, for example, were intended to incapacitate Germany militarily to ensure it would never again pose a threat.27 Such punitive settlements, however, will be deeply unpopular in the target state. The new leadership, therefore, has an especially strong incentive to renege on them. Consequently, the foreign power may have to take active enforcement measures, such as using its own troops to carry out the terms or to monitor the target’s compliance with them. France and Belgium, for example, occupied the German Ruhr region to force Germany’s compliance with the reparation terms following the Treaty of Versailles.28 In addition, as the memory of war recedes and concerns over new postwar threats arise, the foreign power’s own domestic public and allies may question the need for such strict enforcement measures. This was the case in the United Kingdom after World War I, where the Labour Party championed the notion that the Treaty of Versailles was too harsh, particularly its reparation terms. Forcing Germany to pay them, critics of the treaty argued, could bring about the collapse of the German economy, endanger international trade, and imperil the United Kingdom’s economic recovery.29 Foreign powers may also encounter international criticism for punishing a weak adversary that can no longer pose a threat. Confronted with these political, diplomatic, and reputational costs, future policymakers may acquiesce to the target’s attempts to alter the postwar settlement. Once they do, the target state can regain its power, as Germany ultimately did after World War I, at which point the target may become too costly to coerce.
To avoid this outcome, policymakers may choose to bear the greater expense of effecting full regime change at the outset. By installing the more reliable external opposition, they can save themselves the high costs of enforcing a punitive settlement indefinitely. Indeed, the Allies’ decision to impose full regime change on Nazi Germany reflected the lessons of the post–World War I era, particularly the difficulty of enforcement. It was widely believed that failure to enforce the postwar settlement had led to Germany’s revival. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was an especially firm believer that no German leader could credibly commit to upholding a settlement that kept Germany weak.30 Thus, the only way to secure lasting peace was to transform Germany by imposing full regime change.
What made partial regime change especially unattractive to Roosevelt was that the only opposition to Adolf Hitler that stood a chance of ousting him came from within his regime. Several high-level German military officials, mainly from the Prussian aristocracy, had tried on various occasions to contact the Allies to discuss the possibility of a coup and a settlement. Roosevelt, however, steadfastly refused to deal with “these East German Junkers.”31 The Prussian elite had played a major part in making the decisions that led to World War I. Some had also initially supported the Nazi Party and advocated noncompliance with the Treaty of Versailles.32 In that context, Roosevelt saw the anti-Nazi Germans as no better than the Nazi Party. Accordingly, he refused to recognize them, insisting instead on unconditional surrender, which would allow the Allies to impose a completely reformed regime led primarily by the relatively weak external opposition.33 In short, when faced with a state expected to gain or regain power, strong states are more likely to pursue full regime change. The internal opposition is a less reliable partner that could become too costly to coerce later on.
My argument suggests the following testable hypothesis:
H1a7: When a state seeks to effect regime change in another state, it is more likely to pursue full regime change if the targeted state is expected to gain or regain military capabilities in the near future.
Estimating the Costs of Regime Change
My argument assumes actors base their choice of strategy on estimates of relative costs. I do not assume that their estimates are correct, only that any other rational actor with complete information would arrive at a similar estimate. Of course, policymakers can, and sometimes do, miscalculate. But this does not mean that miscalculation drives regime change. Indeed, by showing that even rational actors with access to complete information may choose regime change, I argue that miscalculation is not necessary for regime change to occur. More accurate cost estimates might affect the success of an operation, but they will not necessarily prevent it from occurring. Even if leaders could perfectly predict costs, this knowledge might only affect how they bring about regime change. In this section, I discuss how policymakers estimate costs, why their estimates are sometimes wrong, and why, despite a questionable record of success, states continue to pursue regime change.
How Leaders Estimate the Costs of Regime Change
The high costs and seemingly modest benefits of recent regime-change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have rightly raised questions concerning the wisdom of overthrowing foreign leaders. Regime change, however, does not always fail. Although success can be defined in a number of ways, states sometimes do achieve their primary objectives when installing foreign regimes. These objectives may include installing democratic allies, as when the United States pursued regime change in Germany, Japan, and Panama, or installing a puppet that will serve the foreign power’s interests, as when the United States toppled leaders in Chile, Guatemala, and Iran. Nevertheless, even when states achieve their central aims through regime change, their success is often qualified, at best. The United States, for example, may have turned Iran into an ally after the 1953 coup, but the CIA’s involvement inspired anti-Americanism that came to a head twenty-six years later with the Iranian Revolution. How is it then, that despite a modest record of success, policymakers come to believe regime change is the cheapest way to attain their aims?
When policymakers choose regime change, they do so on the basis of relative costs. They do not necessarily expect that regime change will be cheap but that it will be cheaper than the alternative—namely, coercing the leader into a deal. Policymakers seeking regime change may also have direct experience with that alternative, having tried to coerce or induce their targets first. If their efforts met with resistance, they may have already concluded that coercion is costly. In contrast, because the foreign power has not yet tried overthrowing the regime, its cost estimates for deposing the leader come with a wider margin of error. The long-term costs of a regime-change operation may be especially unclear. These costs can depend on events and developments that arise during the post–regime change phase, and that can be difficult to predict. Rebel leaders, for example, may turn out to be better at fighting than governing. Likewise, tactical errors that let former regime members escape or that antagonize the population could have costly consequences down the line. Even when policymakers anticipate these developments, they may overestimate their ability to manage them. This may lead policymakers