Covert Regime Change , livre ebook

Covert Regime Change
America’s Secret Cold War

L INDSEY A. O’R OURKE
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
 
For Evelyn
 

Contents List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgments 1.     The False Promise of Covert Regime Change 2.     Causes 3.     Conduct 4.     Consequences 5.     Overview of US-Backed Regime Changes during the Cold War 6.     Rolling Back the Iron Curtain 7.     Containment, Coup d’ É tat, and the Covert War in Vietnam 8.     Dictators and Democrats in the Dominican Republic 9.     Covert Regime Change after the Cold War Notes Index
 

List of Figures and Tables
Figures
4.1.   Short-Term Effectiveness by Covert Tactic
4.2.   Short-Term Effectiveness by Cold War Alliance
4.3.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and MIDs: Bivariate Correlations
4.4.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and Average Change in Polity Score
4.5.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and Civil War: Bivariate Correlations
4.6.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and Mass Killings: Bivariate Correlations
5.1.   US-Backed Regime Change Attempts by Administration, 1947–1989
Tables
1.1.   US-Backed Regime Change Attempts during the Cold War (1947–1989)
2.1.   Case Selection and Alternative Hypotheses on the Causes of Regime Change
2.2.   Regime Type of Target States—Difference of Proportions Test
4.1.   Probit Analysis of Short-Term Effectiveness
4.2.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and MIDs: Probit Analysis
4.3.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and Civil War: Probit Analysis
4.4.   US-Backed Covert Regime Change and Mass Killing: Probit Analysis
5.1.   US-Backed Offensive Covert Regime Change Attempts during the Cold War
5.2.   US-Backed Preventive Covert Regime Change Attempts during the Cold War
5.3.   US-Backed Hegemonic Covert Regime Change Attempts during the Cold War
 

Acknowledgments
Reflecting back on the many individuals and institutions that have supported this project is heartwarming. Although the long, lonely hours that go into writing a book have, at times, made it feel like a solo endeavor, in reality I owe much to many. I have been able to run my ideas (and drafts) by some of the best scholars in the field while relying heavily upon a wide support network of family, friends, and colleagues the whole time. I am deeply grateful to them all.
This book owes its greatest debt to four scholars at the University of Chicago who generously lent their time and individual talents to this project. First and foremost, John Mearsheimer brought his unrivaled ability to dissect a messy argument down to its core assumptions and then clearly and persuasively articulate those ideas. He is also the model of a courageous scholar, thoughtful mentor, and engaging teacher to which I aspire, and I cannot thank him enough for his spot-on advice and personal support over the years. Charlie Glaser’s striking ability to quickly deduce all the logical implications of an argument helped me to refine and improve my theory. Dan Slater brought exceptional intellectual creativity and rigorous comparative methods to the project. Lastly, his reputation having preceded him, I could not wait for Paul Staniland to begin at Chicago. Not wanting to look overly eager, however, I played it cool and waited until his second official day before asking him to join my committee. Thankfully, he accepted, and his high standards and incisive questions were invaluable.
The University of Chicago is an incredibly vibrant intellectual community, and I feel privileged to have called it home. While there, I met an outstanding group of colleagues and friends who provided crucial early feedback on this project and looked out for my well-being in a thousand different ways. My heart will always hold a special place for all of them and Thursday nights at Jimmy’s. Thank you to Ahsan Butt, Shawn Cochrane, Keren Fraiman (on loan from MIT), Gene Gerzhoy, Christopher Graziul, Eric Hundman, Morgan Kaplan, Rosemary Kelanic, Joshua Kerr, Monica Lee, Chad Levinson, Adam Levine-Weinberg, Gabriel Mares, Sarah Parkinson, M. J. Reese, and Richard Westerman. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ahsan. The earliest idea for this project came out of a conversation with him, and thanks to his insights and unwavering good humor, he has become my sounding board for the better part of a decade. Finally, I may not have found myself at UofC in the first place if not for the encouragement of Justin Robbins and my undergraduate mentor, Neil Tennant, and I thank them both for setting me down on this path.
In 2014, I was fortunate to find a new home at Boston College. My colleagues throughout the Political Science Department and its chair, Susan Shell, have been tremendously supportive of this project. Within the IR subfield, I have found scholars whose own research inspires me by asking big questions, and who have been invariably generous with their time and comments. My sincerest thank-you to Tim Crawford, David Deese, Jennifer Erickson, Peter Krause, and Robert Ross. I owe an especially emphatic thanks to Jennifer, who is both brilliant and selfless and has kindly allowed herself to become my go-to source for just about everything. Many others in the department have supported my research, and I thank Jerry Easter and Nasser Behnegar as well as the IR graduate students, Andrew Bowen, Emily Kulenkamp, and Adam Wunische, in particular. I have also relied upon several outstanding undergraduate research fellows, who have spent countless hours tracking down sources, filing FOIA requests, and digging through archival documents on my behalf. A heartfelt thank-you to Joshua Behrens, Maximillien Inhoff, Trevor Jones, Adam Kleinfeld, Theodore Kontopolous, Luna Perez, Caitlin Toto, and Colleen Ward for their meticulous work. Finally, I thank Shirley Gee and Karina Ovalles for making all of my interactions with the university easier.
In October 2015, Tim Crawford chaired a book workshop that brought together a fantastic group of scholars who read my manuscript in its entirety and provided sharp feedback throughout. I thank Ahsan Butt, Dick Betts, Michael Desch, Alexander Downes, Jerry Easter, Jennifer Erickson, Joshua Shifrinson, and Jon Western for their valuable feedback, and BC’s Provost Office for funding the workshop. I hope they can see how much I deeply appreciated their constructive suggestions reflected in the final version.
While completing this project, I have twice benefited from yearlong fellowships that facilitated my archival research and introduced me to numerous scholars who supported this project in diverse ways. During my predoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University, I learned much from Stephen Biddle, Austin Carson, Jeff Colgan, Alexander Downes, Payam Ghalehdar, Charles Glaser, Rose Kelanic, Sameer Lalwani, Harris Mylonas, Elizabeth Saunders, Joshua Shifrinson, and Caitlin Talmadge. During my postdoctoral fellowship at the Dickey Institute for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, I benefited greatly from the insights of faculty members Daniel Benjamin, Stephen Brooks, Jennifer Lind, Daryl Press, Benjamin Valentino, and William Wohlforth, and my peers Jeffrey Friedman, Joshua Kertzer, Victor McFarland, Maria Sperandei, and Laura Thaut Vinson.
Many other scholars have supported this project in various ways. Anatoly Arlashin was indispensable for the statistical analyses in Chapter 4. Jeremy Bigwood helped me to uncover many of the archival documents used in Chapter 6. Alexander Downes, Keren Fraiman, Joshua Rovner, and Joshua Shifrinson have all given valuable comments on multiple occasions. I also thank the audiences for the comments following various presentations at the University of Chicago, George Washington University, Dartmouth College, Boston College, Yale University, Princeton University, and MIT, as well as at the annual conferences of the American Political Science and International Studies associations.
Over the past eight years, I have received additional financial support that made my archival research possible from the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, the Jewish Family Service Association of Cleveland, and the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston College. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to the many archivists who have assisted my research and patiently answered my questions at the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Security Archive, and the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan presidential libraries.
I greatly appreciate the sharp and constructive feedback from my editor at Cornell University Press, Roger Haydon, series editor, Robert Jervis, and production editor, Erin Davis. Though I may not know the identity of my anonymous external reviewer, I have been singing his or her praises for careful and constructive comments.
Arguments derived, in part, from theories developed in chapter 4 have previously appeared in Alexander B. Downes and Lindsey A. O’Rourke, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Seldom Improves Interstate Relations,” International Security 41, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 43–89; and Lindsey A. O’Rourke, “Covert Calamities: American-Backed Covert Regime Changes and Civil War,” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 23, no. 3 (2017) 232–45.
I thank my parents, Michael and Saundra O’Rourke, for stressing the importance of education and being a constant source of love and support my entire life. My brothers, Pete, Phil, and Steve O’Rourke; and my in-laws, Jenny and Mariam O’Rourke; and George, Judy, and Brad Boyerinas have provided unflagging encouragement and considerable hospitality as I worked on this project. Finally, like most of the good things in my life, this book was made possible by my husband and best friend, Ben Boyerinas. I owe him countless small thank-yous for helping me find time to write and proofreading on