Despite its improving relations with Havana, Washington’s ultimate goal for the island remains regime change.
Has U.S. Policy Toward Cuba Really Changed?
read more
Regime Change
Sunshine State Thaws U.S.-Cuba Relations
A majority of Floridians now favor thawing U.S. relations with Cuba. Will Washington follow?
Free Alan Gross—and the Cuban Five!
If the U.S. wants Cuba to release USAID contractor Alan Gross, it should give up its own political prisoners from Cuba.
Breathless in North Korea
For 60 years, Koreans on both sides of the DMZ have awaited a peace treaty. Instead they’ve gotten an arms race and political repression.
Promoting Democracy in Iran Is Not Only Wishful Thinking, But Belligerent
Foreign Affairs contributor Patrick Clawson clings to the hoary old myth of democracy promotion as a means to regime change in Iran.
Is China Heading for Collapse?
An implicit social contract underlies the Chinese people’s relationship with its government. The people accept the autocratic Communist Party of China regime with its corruption and minimal public participation, and the regime delivers a continuous and rapid improvement in the economic standard of living. But that social contract is now at risk, as China is on an unsustainable path that will result in economic stagnation or decline in the coming decades.
Neocon Call for Regime Change in Syria Doesn’t Do U.S. National Security Any Favors
Regime change in Syria is an appealing idea, but Islamists stand ready to fill the vacuum in power.
Nonviolent Action and Pro-Democracy Struggles
The United States has done for the cause of democracy what the Soviet Union did for the cause of socialism. Not only has the Bush administration given democracy a bad name in much of the world, but its high-profile and highly suspect “democracy promotion” agenda has provided repressive regimes and their apologists an excuse to label any popular pro-democracy movement that challenges them as foreign agents, even when led by independent grassroots nonviolent activists.
In recent months, the governments of Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus, and Burma, among others, have disingenuously claimed that popular nonviolent civil insurrections of the kind that toppled the corrupt and autocratic regimes in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in recent years – and that could eventually threaten them as well – are somehow part of an effort by the Bush administration and its allies to instigate “soft coups” against governments deemed hostile to American interests and replace them by more compliant regimes.