Making Friends Out of Foes: The Logic of Foreign-Imposed Regime Change

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The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a long history of attempts by major powers to impose regimes on militarily weak states. That the strong should target the weak has largely gone unquestioned by scholars, who assume that militarily weak states suffer regime change most, because they can do little to stop it. But if a major power can easily topple a weak regime, then it stands to reason that the regime would accommodate the major power, long before a confrontation can develop. The central puzzle of foreign-imposed regime change is therefore that asymmetric power makes it possible, but it should also make it unnecessary.

To explain this puzzle, Ms. Willard-Foster argues that major powers depose regimes when the cost of inducing or coercing their acquiescence to a policy exceeds the cost of war. In other words, regime change happens because cooperation for states is sometimes hard, while war is sometimes cheap. Her argument suggests not only that strategies, such as containment, can often work if properly funded, but also that regime change policies may actually drive states to more aggressive behavior. She will present the results of a statistical analysis and discuss how her theory applies to Soviet policy vis-à-vis Poland and Hungary in 1956.

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