With great-power rivalries again at the centre of international relations, democratic governments have relied on secret statecraft to shape or sway regimes in weaker states, including supporting or aiding regime change. Far from advancing democracy globally, these efforts are exacerbating its vulnerabilities at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.
Local militaries – with or without external backing – remain the leading drivers of regime change. In Pakistan, for example, the military reasserted its traditional dominance over the government in 2022 when it engineered the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan. In Bangladesh, the military recently took advantage of a violent student-led uprising to compel Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country before installing an interim civilian-led administration headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
However, external powers also often play a key role in driving regime change. Yes, the mechanisms remain murky. Since strategic skullduggery rarely leaves any political fingerprints, intervening powers can plausibly deny involvement, leaving independent analysts struggling to distinguish fact from fiction.
Seeing where an external power gets its leverage is usually fairly easy. China, for example, is the world’s largest trading economy and official creditor for developing countries. While the details of China’s loan agreements are far from transparent, there is no doubt that it attaches many strings to its funding, which increase its leverage over borrowers, possibly even driving it into sovereignty-eroding debt traps.
The United States, for its part, dominates the international financial architecture, enjoys considerable leverage over traditional lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and issues the world’s main reserve currency. With these levers, it has significant power to reward or punish countries, including by imposing painful economic sanctions.
The US has long been accused of – and sometimes admitted to – helping to topple or prop up foreign regimes, including by meddling in elections or aiding uprisings, such as the “color revolutions” in some post-Soviet states. Some have even alleged that the US played a role in the recent overthrow of Khan in Pakistan and Hasina in Bangladesh, though US officials have denied any involvement.
The question is what a democracy like the US hopes to achieve by contributing to regime change. The answer cannot be lasting democratic breakthroughs, which rarely arrive in the wake of popular uprisings. Instead, countries will likely face political instability, social disorder, and economic disruption. That is certainly the case in Bangladesh, which is now facing chaos and violence, with mobs burning down factories, hospitals, hotels, and homes.
A more likely explanation – for which there is ample evidence – is that Western powers seek to advance their own geopolitical and economic interests by supporting “friendly” regimes and driving out “unfriendly” ones. The regimes’ democratic credentials (or lack thereof) seem to matter little here, though Western powers do prefer that there is a pretence of democracy.
This helps to explain why military takeovers are often followed by elections or the installation, as in Bangladesh, of a government with a civilian face: military leaders hope to bolster the new government’s international legitimacy and, in many cases, retain access to Western financial assistance. After all, the US is legally required to cut off aid to a country after a coup. After the military junta returned to power in Myanmar in 2021, US President Joe Biden’s administration imposed stringent sanctions on the country. It later began providing non-lethal aid to anti-junta forces.
But US leaders take great care in deciding which military takeovers to label as “coups.” Of the more than two dozen military coups or indirect takeovers that have taken place in the last 15 years, the US refrained from condemning about half because it considered the regime change favourable to its regional interests. In this sense, the US has often sacrificed democracy at the altar of geopolitics.
Even if competitive, elections alone do not guarantee popular empowerment or adherence to constitutional rules, especially when the military holds decisive power. While the international community might view a civilian-led government positively – even if it is merely a façade for continued military control – domestic legitimacy may well be lacking, even when the coup-makers shed their uniforms and rebrand themselves “civilian” leaders, as the Thai army chief did after seizing power in 2014. (He remained in office as the country’s “civilian” prime minister for nine years.)
Democracy is in retreat globally. Many populations are facing the erosion of their political rights and civil liberties. Even the world’s leading democracies suffer from low public trust in governments and bitterly polarized politics. And closed autocracies now outnumber liberal democracies. Western powers will only accelerate this trend by accepting or tolerating military rule – even behind a civilian facade.
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