Source: The Atlantic
by George Packer
“Regime change on the cheap — by covert action, military coup, air power, or short ground war — has tempted almost every American president since World War II. No wonder: It offers to solve a difficult foreign problem with little cost to Americans. We remember the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as prolonged, bloody, ultimately futile attempts to remake recalcitrant foreign countries as democracies. But President George W. Bush intended both wars to be brief and low cost—regime change with a small footprint. … Iran, with its deep history, its educated and relatively homogeneous population, and its unbreakable freedom movement, has always seemed a better bet for political transformation than Afghanistan or Iraq. But if recent decades have taught anything, it’s that the absence of tyranny is not freedom but chaos; that war is a likelier agent of disintegration than of renewal; that America knows how to destroy regimes but not remake societies.” (03/02/26)