Throughout early-modern and modern history, the political stability of a nation has largely relied on two things: subservience to the powerful or sheer military strength for deterrence. Miss either of the two, and your country is up for grabs, irrespective of justification.
Few phrases in international politics generate as much controversy as “regime change.” To some, it is a noble effort to promote democracy and human rights. To others, it is the modern expression of great-power politics; a process through which powerful nations reshape weaker ones to suit their strategic interests, often leaving behind instability, civil war, and shattered societies.
Whatever one calls it, history demonstrates one uncomfortable truth: governments have repeatedly been overthrown with direct or indirect assistance from outside powers. No country has done this more extensively than the United States, frequently supported by allies in Europe, under the banner of democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, or counterterrorism.
The question is no longer whether regime change has happened. It has. The more important question is whether it has delivered the democratic outcomes its architects promised. The historical record offers a sobering answer.
The Blueprint: Iran, 1953
Iran remains perhaps the clearest documented example to date. In 1953, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was democratically elected and sought to nationalise Iran’s oil industry, threatening British commercial interests. Britain appealed to Washington, and together Britain’s MI6 and the CIA orchestrated Operation Ajax.
The operation combined propaganda, political manipulation, bribery of influential figures, encouragement of protests, and support for military officers willing to remove Mossadegh. The coup restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to full authority. This is no conspiracy theory. The CIA itself later acknowledged its role through declassified documents.
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The consequences continue to shape global politics. The Shah’s increasingly authoritarian rule eventually culminated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, giving rise to the Islamic Republic that remains one of Washington’s principal adversaries today. Note the irony: an operation intended to secure Western interests by installing an authoritarian regime.
The operation overthrew democracy and installed tyranny to protect foreign interests. Ironically, an operation intended to secure Western interests arguably produced one of the West’s greatest geopolitical challenges.
As I write today, the US is struggling to justify a failed regime change attempt at the Islamic Republic of Iran after spending billions of dollars in war and expending innocent lives. One key takeaway was that the US, by President Trump’s own admission, took control of Iran’s oil through covert operations.
Guatemala: Democracy interrupted
Only one year after Iran, history repeated itself. Guatemala was next to experience regime change. President Jacobo Árbenz, elected in 1951, introduced land reforms that redistributed unused large estates to landless peasants, benefiting indigenous communities.
The reforms threatened powerful foreign corporations, especially the United Fruit Company, an American corporation with close connections to influential figures in Washington.
The solution was a CIA-organised Operation PBSUCCESS, supporting opposition forces that removed Árbenz from office. The US then installed Carlos Castillo Armas, who went on to establish a military dictatorship, ban opposition parties, and reverse social reforms, including the land reforms.
The aftermath was not democratic renewal. It was protecting the interests of the mighty United States. Guatemala descended into decades of military dictatorship, civil conflict, and widespread human rights abuses that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Congo: A leader eliminated
Perhaps one of Africa’s saddest stories is the replacement of Patrice Lumumba with Mobutu Sese Seko—swapping freedom with tyranny, hope with despair. Patrice Lumumba represented the hopes of an independent Congo emerging from colonial rule that had exploited the country to the core.
Western governments viewed his perceived closeness to the Soviet Union with alarm. Although historians continue debating the precise degree of American involvement, extensive evidence shows that both Belgian authorities and Western intelligence agencies supported efforts leading to Lumumba’s removal and eventual assassination.
The decades of dictatorship that followed under Mobutu Sese Seko transformed one of Africa’s richest countries into one of its most troubled. The tyrant oversaw a country characterised by single-party rule, corruption, suppression of political opposition, human rights abuses, and restrictions on freedom of expression.
It turns out the Belgian and US adventure in the Congo was not about democracy and good governance.
Ukraine: Revolution or intervention?
Ukraine remains among the most fiercely contested examples, and I will not pretend to know better. However, the signs are painted all over the place.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of America’s finest minds and a former adviser to some Eastern European states, argues that Western governments, particularly the United States, actively encouraged events leading to the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and subsequently pursued policies that contributed to the current war.
Sachs points to years of American funding for democracy-promotion initiatives, the leaked phone conversation between the then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing Ukraine’s political future, and broader NATO expansion.
In his address to the European Parliament, Sachs goes on to explicitly state that the US paid the Euromaidan protesters, contributing to what would become the most devastating conflict in post-World War II Europe.
Critics of this view argue that the Euromaidan protests were fundamentally a mass domestic movement driven by millions of Ukrainians angered by corruption and Yanukovych’s decision to abandon closer ties with the European Union.
They contend that whilst Western governments offered political and financial support to civil society and expressed preferences regarding Ukraine’s future, there is no conclusive evidence that the CIA or Washington orchestrated the protests or paid demonstrators to overthrow the government.
What is beyond dispute is that the United States had invested substantial resources in supporting Ukrainian civil society and democratic institutions over many years, that senior American officials engaged intensively with Ukrainian political actors during the crisis, and that Russia viewed these developments as a direct threat to its security interests.
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Whether one sees 2014 primarily as a democratic revolution, a constitutional crisis, an externally influenced political transition, or some combination of all three depends largely on how one weighs these competing bodies of evidence.
What is clear is that Ukraine now looks less democratic than it ever was and is increasingly becoming a carbon copy of Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya if the current situation continues.
What followed, however, is tragically clear: regime change did not help. Instability came. Russia annexed Crimea. War erupted in eastern Ukraine. And Russia eventually invaded in 2022.
Democracy promotion?
Supporters of Western foreign policy argue that these interventions sought to protect democracy, prevent atrocities, or contain aggressive authoritarian governments. The United States has always presented its foreign interventions as noble missions aimed at defending democracy, protecting human rights, fighting terrorism, promoting stability, or safeguarding international law. History tells a different story.
As a teenager in the early 2000s, following my father’s appetite for geopolitics through international media outlets, I ended up hating Saddam Hussein for his alleged obsession with “ending humanity” with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). It didn’t take too long for the world to learn that Iraq had none, as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would later admit in his plea for forgiveness.
Critics argue that humanitarian language frequently coincides with strategic interests involving energy resources, military alliances, regional influence, or economic access.
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Reality is often more complicated than either narrative suggests. Governments can indeed be corrupt and authoritarian, whilst foreign powers simultaneously pursue their own geopolitical objectives.
Mobutu’s Congo, Castillo’s Guatemala, and the Shah’s Iran performed far worse on the same metrics Western powers preach, yet remained in the good books. Many such examples remain today, not to mention Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro.
Missing conversation
Perhaps the greatest irony is that Western governments often condemn interference in democratic processes whilst defending their own interventions as exceptional, necessary, or humanitarian. It sounds natural, completely human!
It is incredibly difficult to condemn countries like Russia or other powers in their military adventures whilst ignoring one’s own illegal actions. Other countries will always justify their own actions by pointing to precedents established by the United States and its allies.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, and President Putin got indicted by the International Criminal Court, all was well—until Israel flattened Gaza and Benjamin Netanyahu got the same treatment from the ICC.
The result of such selfishness and double standards is an international system where every major power accuses the others of violating sovereignty whilst defending its own actions as indispensable.
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History does not suggest that authoritarian governments deserve protection from criticism. Nor does it suggest that every popular uprising is orchestrated from abroad. However, it does suggest something equally important: invading a sovereign state is illegal, no matter the justification, and removing a government is often far easier than building a stable political order in its place.
Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and many others demonstrate that foreign intervention can alter the course of history but not necessarily in the way its architects intend. This also shows that the architects of regime change policies often act on covert motivations rather than the cosmetic “good guys” posture they project.
Ukraine, Iran, and Venezuela remind us that even today, the line between domestic revolution, foreign influence, and geopolitical competition remains fiercely contested.
Perhaps the lesson for all major powers is one embedded in the United Nations Charter itself: sovereignty, diplomacy, and peaceful settlement of disputes are imperfect principles, but history repeatedly shows that the alternatives can be devastating.
If the objective of foreign policy is lasting peace rather than temporary geopolitical advantage, then regime change should be remembered less as a triumph of strategy than as a warning about the limits of power.
Festo Mulinda is a political analyst and freelance columnist focusing on international relations and geopolitics. He’s available at mulindafesto@gmail.com or on X as @fmulinda_III. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.
