Day: October 10, 2025

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that regime change is an effective tool for supplanting odious regimes, advancing American security interests, and promoting democracy. But the empirical evidence shows that armed regime-change missions rarely succeed and typically produce severe, unintended consequences for America’s long-term national security and humanitarian goals.

Policymakers should consider the depressing empirical record before rushing to support any covert mission. They should also be aware that a serious regime-change effort must include the political commitment to commit to decades of institution-building. Otherwise, it is likely to morph into a prolonged military occupation and may have a variety of negative, unexpected outcomes.

Even with these warnings in mind, however, there will be cases when U.S. officials will find it appropriate to push for the downfall of a foreign leader. This may be justified in the face of an imminent threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, mass terrorism, or other catastrophic events that can only be addressed by force.

Nonetheless, a consistent commitment to using force for regime-change purposes is ill-advised. It impedes the effectiveness of other tools that are more successful at advancing U.S. national security and human rights goals, and it risks empowering factions that are more dangerous than the ones that have been removed from power. Instead of sponsoring a coup or supporting rebels militarily, the United States should use its other policy tools to promote democratic institutions and improve human rights without resorting to covert action.

The Israelis and Palestinians have been unable to reach a lasting peace agreement. Although the reasons are complex, a study of the barriers that hinder peacemaking efforts can shed light on what needs to be done to overcome them.

One of the primary barriers is strategic: the negotiators’ effort to maximize their own gains at the expense of their counterparts. In the past, this has meant pushing a hard bargain and using tactics such as positional bargaining to claim value for their own demands, even when it undermines trust.

Another barrier is structural: the internal political structures that constrain the negotiating process and its outcomes. For example, the Israeli political system is highly fragmented and is prone to frequent leadership changes. This has meant that negotiations are often renegotiated with different individuals at the negotiating table and the emergence of distinct negotiating groups.

This creates coordination problems and reduces the overall effectiveness of the negotiating process. The result is a recursive process with no visible progress toward an end to the conflict.

On the Palestinian side, the major political wishes are security guarantees (though Israel is not concerned about a war with an external adversary, it does worry about suicide bombs and other internal insurgencies). However, the Palestinians also want to end their isolation from the rest of the world, especially recognizing Jerusalem as the united capital of Israel. This is difficult to accomplish without Israel accepting defensible borders and renunciation of the right of return.