Interventionism

Matthew Petti | 1.20.2026 11:30 AM

Regime change are dirty words in American politics. Even politicians who are defending wars abroad insist that "regime change" isn't the goal. Looming over the conversation is the Iraq War, the Bush administration's 2003 attempt to overthrow the Iraqi dictatorship and install a new democracy, which ended with the collapse of Iraq and violent blowback around the world. When the Obama administration helped overthrow the ruler of Libya without trying to micromanage the new government, that also ended with a Libyan civil war and the infamous attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

So why did those campaigns go so badly? With the Trump administration fresh from deposing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and weighing a war to support the Iranian uprising, the question is more relevant than ever. And no one in American politics can seem to agree on the answer. A common left-wing criticism is that regime changes are a form of imperialist violence bound to destroy countries. A budding right-wing criticism is that the U.S. hasn't done enough imperialist violence. If only the U.S. military had been more brutal in Iraq and taken the country's oil, President Donald Trump insists, then Washington would have gotten its way.

And then there's the idea that some nations simply aren't ready for freedom, either because their countries aren't real or because their cultures are backward. After the failure of the Libyan campaign, President Barack Obama himself sighed that Middle Easterners and their "tribalism" required "a few smart autocrats" to manage. Last week, CNN commentator Van Jones claimed that regime........

© Reason.com