A policy of regime change is one in which the United States, or any other country, uses a variety of covert and overt policy mechanisms to try to take away the leadership or political power structure of another nation-state. This includes, but is not limited to, military actions that do not involve full-scale war.
The goal of regime change is to replace an undesirable government with one that is better, but this is usually a dangerous proposition for the intervener. It requires an understanding of the society that has been toppled and a plan for the new order that must emerge from the wreckage. It can also produce unintended consequences and unforeseen costs.
Most often, the foreign powers that engage in regime change do not have sufficient understanding of the society they are entering to make smart decisions about how to best shape a new political order. This ignorance is often compounded by ignorance of the local culture and history that may be a key driver of the society’s politics and that will influence how well a new regime can work.
A growing scholarly consensus is that regime-change operations are rarely successful. Even when they do succeed in taking down an odious dictatorship, they are typically associated with more civil war, lower levels of democracy, more repression, and a greater risk of triggering international conflict. Furthermore, they can draw the foreign intervener into lengthy nation-building projects that will undermine the effectiveness of other tools for promoting democracy and human rights around the world.