In the realm of international politics, it was common that super powers advocate for regime change within a state when they perceive that it poses a threat to international security and peace, due to either its hostility towards its regional neighborhood or on an international scale, or being a safe haven for terrorism. The notion of powerful states interfering into the affairs of others has been concealed under a specific form of intervention, the so-called humanitarian intervention. In this form, foreign powers justify their intervention under the pretext of holding rulers accountable for their behaviors and actions toward their citizens and in order to restructure the political systems in accordance with what they label as democratic values. It is needless to say that the reasoning of employing this concept is in fact to serve the interests of the intervening countries.
The perfect example is the US intervention, post WWII and the defeat of the Axis powers, which aimed to change the political regime in Germany and Japan to be in line with Western democracy. This is actually the first case of such intervention as far as modern history is concerned. However, those cases were used to justify less wise, even doomed, intervention attempts to enforce regime change, overlooking the fact that every political situation has its own unique context.
In the case of Germany and Japan, one needs to consider that such an intervention took place after a crushing defeat of the Axis powers in a war that lasted for years and caused shocking destruction and heavy losses and casualties. By contrast, later intervention attempts were carried out against political regimes that were relatively stable and strong, where most of the citizens viewed such interference as an infringement upon their national sovereignty, and in some cases resulted in national resistance.
The Pretext of Terrorism
The rising threats of terrorism, at the beginning of this century, revived concepts such as regime change and political intervention. However, it must be noted that US decision makers always have kept regime change in mind as a tool, especially whenever other regimes become a potential threat to American interests (ie. Castro's regime which came into existence after the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s) or to an ally (ie. the USSR and China- supported Viet Cong in North Vietnam, which threatened the regime in the US-friendly South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s).
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961, in which the USA depended on Cuban dissidents) was a complete fiasco, and so was the American invasion of Vietnam. Nevertheless, the US policy makers did not seem to learn their lesson, despite the heavy losses and casualties Washington suffered, especially in Vietnam.
The success of George Bush’s role in the Gulf war in 1991, played a key role in changing the perception of the subsequent US administrations about foreign interventions, despite the fact that the Kuwaiti context was unique of being a legitimate defensive operation, by Kuwait, Arabs and international players. However, the Gulf war changed the perception of the subsequent US administrations about foreign interventions as it became more flexible, rather than maintaining the Weiberger-Powell Doctrine of conservative policies of engagements.
The aggravation of threats of terrorism following 9/11 provided the pretext for US administrations to exploit and revive the old, unsuccessful ideas of intervention to enforce regime change. Consequently, the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 aiming to defeat the Taliban, a provider of a safe haven for al-Qaeda. In 2003, it invaded Iraq on account of unfounded accusations, one of which was the claim that Iraq was supporting terrorism.
An American Failure
The results of post-September 11 interventions did not differ at all from the precedents of past experience, which proved to be a catastrophic failure. In Iraq, US policies resulted in the collapse of state institutions and societal fragmentation. The post 2003 political regime devised by American experts suffered from fragmentation and instability, which Iraq still faces to this day. In addition, the invasion has reinforced the Iranian influence in Iraq to an unprecedented scale, as it exploited the dismantling state and a fiercer form of terrorism, as the first terrorist group (ISIS) aimed to build a state.
As for the Afghanistan case, it must be regarded as the latest lesson for the US about the drawbacks of enforced foreign intervention and regime change. For twenty years, Americans tried to eliminate the Taliban to no avail. In 2020, the Trump administration reached an agreement with the movement, and Biden's administration finished what Trump had started, withdrawing US forces abruptly from Afghanistan. From the Taliban’s side, the terms of the agreement were simply a ‘promise’ not to let Afghanistan become a safe haven for terrorist groups targeting America. Washington regarded the agreement as a victory, though it is actually a defeat, whether politically or militarily, as the US eventually had to make peace with the movement that Washington originally meant to eradicate; a movement that after its defeat, not only resisted the US, but also forced it to withdraw. Furthermore, Washington did not succeed in eliminating al-Qaeda. Besides, the political system which was backed by the US in Afghanistan for two decades collapsed immediately with the approach of the Taliban.
This, again, must be the last lesson; major powers must know that imposing regime change from outside a country is not a straitjacket applied indiscriminately regardless of the specificity of circumstances, due to the great discrepancies between the invader and the invaded as far as values and social structures are concerned. Yet, the remaining question is: Will the US learn its lesson?
