Two years ago, an essay in the Claremont Review of Books noted that regime change entered the popular lexicon in “the early days of the 9/11 wars, when the Bush (43) Administration argued that the security of America and of the entire world depended not merely on defeating hostile countries militarily but on changing their governments into ones more inherently peaceable and favorable to our interests.” Of course, regimes change all the time, but regime change came to mean “external, forcible transformation from ‘authoritarianism’ or ‘dictatorship.’” Today he is the director of the policy-planning staff at the State Department (a bit of an oxymoron in this administration), and in April, the White House named him to lead the U.S. delegation at technical talks with Iran on a nuclear deal—negotiations that are presumably irrelevant for the time being. The Iraq War was the product of months of preparation by the George W. Bush administration: military mobilization, avid though unsuccessful attempts to rally international support, an extended period of manufacturing consensus in Congress and in the American public.
Author: David A. Graham
Published at: 2025-06-23 22:20:00
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