Regime Change Creates False Hopes

Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, was a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff from 2011 to 2013, where he advised the secretary on U.S. policy in North Africa and the Levant.

February 28, 2016

Regime change is satisfying to the American soul. U.S. warplanes arrive in the sky, like the cavalry coming over the hill in movies of old, and the bad guys are put to flight. A cartoon dictator is deposed and a capital is liberated, while cheering crowds wave the American flag in the streets. It all makes for good television.

The U.S. military cannot create stability. It must have the stomach to work with regimes it opposes, despite their crimes.

But over recent years, we have learned (or should have) that, in the Middle East, regime change is not enough. Recent experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya has demonstrated that the United States is extremely good at overthrowing governments. But what really matters for ending the suffering and maintaining U.S. credibility is the ability to stabilize the country after the cheering stops.

The United States is not good at this less telegenic slog. In Iraq, the U.S. tried to stabilize the country through a large American presence. In Afghanistan, the U.S. stood up a NATO-led effort. In Libya, the U.S. left the task to indigenous actors with United Nations help. The common feature of all of these efforts is that none of them worked. The result in every case has been continued war, spreading chaos and increasing anger and violence directed at the United States.

Part of the reason for these failures is that the evil dictator and his regime were only part of the problem. In fact, the regime, for all of its oppression, is often holding back the chaos. Yet in Syria, we continue to focus on President Bashir al-Assad as if his departure is the solution. We condemn peace deals that might leave him in place. We tell ourselves that if the U.S. had just dispatched him with its usual flair, Syria today would be peaceful. But, as in much of the Middle East, Syria’s problems are much deeper than just its dictator.

It is long past time to realize that the U.S., despite its impressive military prowess, cannot create stability through regime change. For that, we need to work with the targeted regimes as they are, despite their flaws and their crimes. As hard as that is to stomach, we do not have the capacity to do otherwise.