As the crisis in Venezuela unfolds, some have urged the United States to pursue “regime change” there. But if a regime is deeply unpopular with the local population, it’s unlikely that simply replacing it with one more suited to American interests will make things better. In fact, the history of regime change demonstrates that doing so has severe and often lasting consequences for both the intervening country and the local population. As a result, the overuse of regime-change policies undermines the effectiveness of other foreign policy tools that are much more successful at advancing democracy and human rights, and harms America’s ability to achieve its policy goals.

The historical record reveals that it is exceedingly difficult to supplant objectionable Middle Eastern regimes without creating new and different problems that are far more costly and damaging than proponents of such action realize or admit. As scholarly research shows, there are several reasons for this depressing track record.

The first is that pursuing regime change is a departure from the principle of Westphalian sovereignty, which holds that what happens inside a nation’s borders is not the business of other countries. In the case of regime change, nations intervene in the name of protecting their citizens from the ills of a foreign government, but they are not careful to prevent the spillover effects of their actions, which can include civil war, internal repression, and the empowerment of factions that are as dangerous or more so than the original regime.