Regime Change for Dummies;A brief global history
Foreign Policy
May 14, 2018
By Stephen M. Walt
In my last column, I argued that U.S. President Donald Trump’s rash decision to violate the Iran nuclear deal was the first step in a new round of regime change in the Middle East. If his goal was stopping an Iranian bomb and preventing a regional arms race, the existing agreement was working just fine, and he should have been trying to make it permanent instead of gutting it. If his goal was stopping Iran’s “regional activities,” the smart strategy would have been to keep the country from going nuclear while working with others to bring Iran to heel through pressure and additional diplomacy. Instead, Trump, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are hoping that violating the Iran deal will let them re-impose sanctions on Iran. They hope this pressure will topple the Islamic Republic, or lead Iran’s own hard-liners to restart its nuclear enrichment program and provide a pretext for the preventive war that Bolton has long advocated.
More sensible strategists might have first considered whether this goal even makes sense. What does history teach us? Did previous efforts at regime change (by the United States and by others) produce the expected benefits, or did they end up making things worse? ....
The real puzzle, of course, is why the United States seems incapable of learning this rather obvious lesson. One reason it doesn’t learn is that it is the countries where it intervenes that bear most of the costs of its imperial follies, while the only Americans who die or are wounded are those who have volunteered for military service. And because the United States now finances wars by borrowing, the economic costs will be paid by future generations, not by those who are making decisions today. Add to this mix the phalanx of well-funded, hawkish think tanks, letterhead organizations, lobbies, and campaign contributors that buy up politicians and provide Bolton and his ilk comfortable sinecures from which to operate, and you can begin to understand why a president who used to say the United States needed to get “out of the nation-building business” is now taking steps that will force it to do more of the same.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/14/regime-change-for-dummies/