Have Wagner’s western cheerleaders already forgotten the perils of forced regime change?

After the coup-that-wasn’t in Russia, many of President Vladimir Putin’s enemies will be bitterly disappointed. Because although there’s no suggestion that western countries had anything to do with it, it was clear that they were hoping the mutiny by the Wagner private army would lead to regime change in the Kremlin

That was, I believe, a foolish wish, for many reasons. First, the possibility of civil war in a country that holds the world’s largest stock of nuclear warheads ought to fill anyone with horror. Second, it must be up to the Russian people to decide their future, and according to the independent Levada Centre Mr Putin’s approval ratings have been around 80 per cent every month since March 2022. Third, any figure who might theoretically rise to power in opposition to Mr Putin would more likely come from the ultra-nationalist right than be a western-friendly liberal like his critics in Europe and North America would prefer.

But above all, it is the very idea of regime change that they should be wary of, rather than dreaming optimistically about. For in practice, it has frequently turned out to be a nightmare for the peoples it was supposed to benefit.

The recent unhappy history of western-supported or imposed regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is well known. Trillions of dollars were spent, hundreds of thousands of people died, hideous new terrorist groups flourished in ungoverned or under-governed spaces; and at the end of it all, the Taliban are back in power in Kabul, Iraq has not recovered from the shattering of the state and remains plagued by instability, and in Libya slavery has been re-established on the Mediterranean coast.

But it’s not just those three instances from this century. A 2020 analysis paper published by the Cato Institute in Washington drew the following conclusions: “Whether trying to achieve political, security, economic, or humanitarian goals, scholars have found that regime‐change missions do not succeed as envisioned. Instead, they are likely to spark civil wars, lead to lower levels of democracy, increase repression, and in the end, draw the foreign intervener into lengthy nation‐building projects.”

One example the paper gave is US support for the ouster of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960: “Following the overthrow, the resulting crisis spiralled into an extensive civil war that resulted in more than 100,000 deaths.”

But there are plenty of others. In 1970, the CIA is believed to have been involved in the coup in Cambodia which removed Prince Norodom Sihanouk as head of state and installed a US-aligned government. This led to five years of civil war, after which the genocidal Khmer Rouge took power and killed around 25 per cent of the population, until 1979, when Vietnam invaded and set up its own client-state government, only finally withdrawing its military forces in 1989.

US covert support for the massacres of suspected Communists in Indonesia in 1965-66, as President Sukarno’s powers were gradually removed and transferred to his successor, Washington-friendly General Suharto, was deemed so successful in targeting Western enemies during the Cold War that it became a playbook – “the Jakarta Method”, as documented by the American journalist Vincent Bevins in his 2020 book of the same title. Up to one million people may have died.

Western-backed regime change in Libya may have been meant to serve as a warning to repressive dictators that their savagery would eventually catch up with them, but in the case of North Korea it had the opposite effect. "History proves that powerful nuclear deterrence serves as the strongest treasured sword for frustrating outsiders' aggression," read a 2016 editorial by the official KCNA news agency. "The Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and the Gaddafi regime in Libya could not escape the fate of destruction after being deprived of their foundations for nuclear development and giving up nuclear programmes of their own accord."

Few would now want to justify any of the cases I mention above, but a hankering still remains in the minds of many politicians and commentators for regime change — which let us define as involving one or all of the following: dramatic change to the political leadership; a rupture of established constitutional norms and the rule of law; and the presence of armed forces, domestic or foreign.

Sometimes it is more polite not to use the term, however. For what happened in Ukraine in 2014, when President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted, if not regime change? The Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, was very popular with American leaders. Indeed, Victoria Nuland, then US Assistant Secretary of State, was highly caught up in it, as a leaked phone call of her talking about which Ukrainian politicians should get which posts confirmed. But there are many — on both the left and the right – who argue that the Kyiv parliament’s vote to remove Mr Yanukovych from office was unconstitutional, not least as the vote was not quorate. This is one reason why the British writer Peter Hitchens recently referred to the events as “a lawless putsch”.

Western governments supported the transfer of power, so it didn’t matter. And one could argue that if you’re going to have a revolution, a few plates are bound to be broken. However — and I hold no brief for Mr Yanukovych whatsoever — he had been legally elected. Wouldn’t it have been better if his fate had been decided at the next presidential election, which was due only 13 months later?

When one considers all the events that followed the Maidan Revolution — Russia’s annexation of Crimea, armed conflict in the Donbas region, and ultimately the invasion of Ukraine — that is a question worth pondering. Had Mr Yanukovych fought and lost a presidential election in 2015, the same things may have happened — or they may not have. We will never know. But it is an argument for letting change occur fully according to countries’ own existing laws and constitutions. That may not be so quick or decisive. It may, though, avoid the unintended consequences of regime change, which have proved so disastrous for so many, so often.