What to Know the ‘Day After’ Overthrowing a Government

The concept of regime change – toppling a hostile or distasteful foreign government and replacing it with a friendly one – has long tantalized U.S. policymakers, inspiring covert actions like the U.S.-supported Iranian coup in 1953 to U.S. military invasion and occupations, such as Iraq in 2003. Under the Trump Administration, this impulse to more forcefully shape the world to U.S. interests has been directed at the rogue North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un and its nuclear weapons program, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which seeks to extend its growing influence throughout the Middle East and tug at the threads of its nuclear deal with the West by pushing its ballistic missile program forward.

However, this kind of external regime change has often resulted in failure and disappointment. Even when the foreign regime is successfully overthrown – often not the case – the result has consistently been civil war or insurrection, not democracy.