Regime change: shock, awe and unease

After declining to allow British bases to be used as part of the offensive strikes of Epic Fury that kicked off the US-Israeli action against Iran on 28 February, the Prime Minister declared that his government “does not believe in regime change from the skies.” After all, he has a memory, like we all do. Nonetheless, open-ended war is back, but with it comes a strong sense of unease, coloured by clear recollections of Iraq, Afghanistan, and to a lesser degree, Libya, none of which were particularly long ago. The “coercive diplomacy” of say, the 78-day NATO Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999 (Operation Allied Force), which succeeded in bombing the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to the table, is but a distant memory from another century.

In building his case for Iraq in January 2003, then Prime Minister Tony Blair, told a House of Commons Liaison Committee:

“You do not engage in military conflict that may produce regime change unless you are prepared to follow through and work in the aftermath of that regime change to ensure the country is stable and the people are properly looked after.”

Besides this sensible though quickly orphaned bit of wisdom, there is the 2.6 million-word Chilcot Report, which examined the UK’s involvement in Iraq from 2001 to 2009. This hefty report had plenty to say about what in essence Starmer referred to in defending his refusal to take part in the opening strikes, saying there needed to be “a viable thought-through plan with an objective that can be achieved or has a viable prospect of being achieved.” On this part, we’re in the dark.

This is not about an objectionable regime that kills its people, sponsors regional militias, or seeks nuclear proliferation, but instead it is about the “what next” being possibly better, and how. With Iraq in 2003, some foundations were laid: there had been the building of a 48-nation Coalition of the Willing, a concentration of military forces, and attempts (unsuccessful) to obtain a UN Security Council resolution for action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Despite all of that, things became messy rapidly as it turned out that planning for the post-regime change phase had been somewhere between negligent and absent.

Though Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed remarkably quickly once the airstrikes began, the system he represented is of course still there and it lashed out liberally. The regime has not collapsed. No matter how successful Epic Fury is militarily, firepower alone is not sufficient to transform those being shocked and awed into how, in the view of those dishing it out, they should organise themselves and act politically. No doubt, regime change is a tricky proposition: driving lasting change once the regime of the day is disposed of is as much about engendering a deep shift in political culture than anything else, given that swift decapitation won’t achieve much lasting change when the system remains as it was. That Khamenei’s son is being touted as the next Ayatollah illustrates this dynasticism well.

If nothing else, today’s bout of mere anarchy shows two key things so far. Firstly, that the political and economic costs of conflict are high, measured in price shocks, squeezes on energy supply and in coming spikes in inflation. Iran’s regionalisation of the conflict has worked well to further confuse wars aims, such as they were, and place pressure on those prosecuting them. Relatively low cost drones proved to be highly disruptive across the Gulf, and therefore, costly to allies, driving up the price of being allied to the US.

Secondly, it reminds us, despite declarations of unilateralism and naked national self-interest by some countries, that this world remains connected with obvious interdependencies among nations which continue to exist and result in harm when threatened. As a corollary, then, multilateralism should still function as an overarching principle of political and diplomatic organisation in the world, given that what began as a narrow conflict – essentially two countries versus one country – has quickly become much wider and affects us all. Though platforms such as the United Nations have rarely been successful at reining in major powers, it is nonetheless an important platform for dialogue, diplomacy, and consideration of international law, as well as a platform for developing many relevant norms which seek to regularise ways in which nations interact with one another.

Regime change comes with only fleeting video game style victorious pay-offs, and just as it was with Iraq or Afghanistan, the present conflagration in Iran is instead likely to result, aside from loss of life, in rising costs, complications, and perhaps murky outcomes. And so a strong sense of unease remains, bringing to mind the words of the 19th-century French writer, politician and diplomat, François-René de Chateaubriand: Les forêts précèdent les hommes, les déserts les suivent.

“Forests preceded men; deserts follow them.”

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