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This chapter explores why states intervene covertly versus overtly during their regime changes. First, it discusses the two major tactical factors weighed by policymakers. It then looks at leaders' broader geostrategic considerations. Afterward, the chapter explains why both tactical and strategic considerations favor covert conduct, and it discusses the conditions under which states will intervene overtly. Next, the five types of covert tactics employed by states during their regime changes are laid out. Finally, the chapter argues that the conduct of a regime change is best thought of as falling along a continuum between truly covert and directly overt action, and it investigates the phenomenon of “pseudo-covert operations,” that is, regime changes where the intervening state officially denies its role even though all parties involved seem to know of its participation.

This chapter provides a historical overview of America's experience with regime change during the Cold War. Looking at the broad trends in America's regime change policy highlights the shifting security interests driving U.S. behavior over this period, the reasons why leaders preferred covert conduct, and the general utility of covert operations. The chapter is split into three sections. These correspond to the three types of security interests motivating these operations: offensive, preventive, and hegemonic. Each section outlines the motives behind that type of regime change, followed by a discussion of how each type of operation fulfilled the two prerequisites for intervention introduced in Chapter 2: namely, that they were in response to a chronic, security-oriented interstate dispute and that the intervening state must have identified a plausible political alternative to the target regime. Although the chapter deals with both covert and overt cases, the six overt cases receive closer individual attention because they pose a stronger challenge to the assertion that states generally prefer to conduct their regime changes covertly.

This chapter explores the causes, conduct, and consequences of the understudied American covert operations in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It first explains why these cases were selected. Next, the chapter describes the collective context and objectives of these missions. Third, it asks why the Truman and Eisenhower administrations opted for covert — rather than overt — conduct. The chapter then offers a comparative historical analysis of three cases: Albania, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and Yugoslavia. It considers why the United States intervened in the first two cases, but not in Yugoslavia, even though all were communist regimes. The case studies also address the reasons the missions in Albania and Ukraine failed, and discusses the pros and cons of covert conduct. Finally, the chapter concludes by drawing out the theoretical lessons of these cases.

This introductory chapter discusses the emergence of covert state agencies and the covert sphere. During the Truman administration in 1947, the National Security Act established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and placed it under the guidance of a new National Security Council (NSC) within the executive branch. In the next four years, the CIA's covert operations section grew by 2,000 percent. This led to the rise of the covert sphere, a cultural imaginary shaped by both institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state. It is an array of discursive forms and cultural institutions such as novels, films, television series, and electronic games, through which the public can discuss or fantasize the covert aspects of the state. This book argues that the covert sphere inspired a large body of narrative and visual culture, generated cynicism about the government, raised skepticism about historical narrative, and contributed significantly to the rise of postmodernism.

This chapter explores whether, how, and to what effect India could concentrate on a more symmetrical covert strategy to deter and counter terrorism from Pakistan by fomenting insurgency and disorder in Pakistan itself. After a brief historical overview of covert operations in India and Pakistan, the chapter assesses the benefits and risks of various covert operations, including targeting killing and economic sabotage, as well as the state of Indian capabilities that would be required to execute these operations. The increased use of covert operations also carries risks, including important reputational risks. Still, symmetry and proportionality may enhance the deterrence and compellence effects of this option. Indeed, the threat of symmetrically balancing Pakistan’s longstanding use of sub-conventional operations could open space for bargaining to achieve a more peaceful modus vivendi between the two antagonists.

This chapter briefly discusses the state of America's attempts at covert regime changes during the Cold War, before turning to the state of covert operations in the post-Cold War era. It shows that the vast majority of America's covert and overt regime changes during the Cold War did not work out as their planners intended. Washington launched these regime changes to resolve security-oriented interstate disputes by installing foreign leaders with similar policy preferences. American experiences during the Cold War, however, illustrate that this was often quite difficult in practice. And yet, as the chapter reveals, the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of America's aggressive pursuit of regime change. In the twenty-seven years since the fall of the Soviet Union, Washington has continued to habitually intervene both covertly and overtly throughout the world. Although U.S. policymakers' appetite for regime change has not diminished, America's post-Cold War interventions have taken on new forms.

This chapter delves into the content of the rules applicable to extraterritorial armed conflicts against non-state actors. Detailed attention is given to the status of individuals under international humanitarian law, and whether members of armed groups should be considered as civilians or combatants. This includes examination of the notions of direct participation in hostilities and unlawful combatants. Following this, the chapter examines challenges in the humanitarian law rules regulating force against non-state actors, in the context of both large scale and small scale operations.

This chapter examines the Anglo–American cooperation or conflict over intelligence, propaganda, and covert operations in Hong Kong. It shows that US intelligence and propaganda operations in Hong Kong, though valuable, were not of such importance that Washington would risk damaging relations with London. Unlike the introduction of export controls during the Korean War, they rarely commanded the attention of top decision-makers; nor did they become a controversial issue in US domestic politics. Consequently, decision-makers in Washington seldom brought pressure to bear on US officials in Hong Kong, whose views might have been closer to the colonial authorities than to their home government's.

This chapter reviews historians' assessment of the circuitous and exciting story of the relations between the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). These historians have been limited in their ability to explore the topic fully, because the CIA's documents regarding covert funding of the CCF remain closed. In assessing this connection, historians have divided historiographical considerations into three main categories: first, the question of how to judge the CIA–CCF collaboration; second, the reasons why the CIA and the CCF chose to collaborate with one another; and finally, the degree to which the CIA controlled or influenced the activities of the CCF's intellectuals. Despite lively and substantive disagreements, it appears that these historians' work maintains a high degree of interdependence. Even as one historian challenges the conclusions of another, there is genuine acknowledgement that previous historical work has proved indispensable for moving the study of the CIA's largest covert operation forwards.

Chapter 1 describes the long historical record of partisan electoral interventions, an attempt by a foreign power to intentionally intervene in an election in another country to help or hinder one of the candidates or parties using various costly covert and overt methods, going back to early modern Europe. This description is followed by an introduction of the two key questions, a discussion of their importance, and a summary of the main arguments regarding the causes of such interventions and their effects on election results. The chapter concludes with a description of the scant research on this topic and the limitations of that research and provides a brief outline of the book.

Chapter 2 lays out in detail the theoretical arguments on the causes and effects of partisan electoral interventions. It also notes the main theoretical assumptions underlying these theoretical arguments, some of which are non-obvious in many political science approaches. It then provides a description of the main methods for testing these theoretical arguments. It first describes how the main historical case studies were chosen and how the data for them was collected. It then concludes by briefly explaining how the definition of electoral interventions was operationalized and how the dataset of partisan electoral interventions (PEIG) utilized for the main statistical analyses was constructed.

This chapter assesses the Frei administration's national and international response to the energy the Cuban Revolution unleashed in Latin America in the 1960s. It presents President Eduardo Frei as an independent actor with his own agenda, which included the backing and accelerating of Chileans' developmental project in nuclear science and technology. It also reconstructs and reevaluates the United States, particularly the CIA's, relationship with Frei.

The central question of this book is: how do states use cyber strategies to influence their rivals? This chapter introduces a theory of cyber coercion that considers the three main types of cyber strategies: disruption, espionage, and degradation. As a form of covert action, cyber coercion can represent ambiguous signals designed to probe adversary intentions and manage escalation risks. This chapter dissects the core logic of coercion and coercive diplomacy as they apply to cyber operations. After defining coercion and establishing the expected threshold of concessions based on surveying multiple studies, it then highlights debates about power and resolve in the traditional coercion literature to extract important considerations for empirical investigation. The inherent ambiguity, primacy of signaling, and temporary effects in cyber operations distort power and resolve in the digital domain.

Chapter 6 begins the analysis of the effects of partisan electoral interventions on election results through a statistical test, using PEIG, of the four main hypotheses developed in Chapter 2. Full support is found for the first three hypotheses. Partisan electoral interventions are found to increase the vote share of the preferred candidate/party by 3% on average—enough in many cases to determine the result. Overt interventions are found to be more effective than covert ones in both the statistical and the substantive sense. However, unlike in later elections, electoral interventions in founding elections usually harm the aided side, reducing its vote share by 6.7% on average. The chapter concludes by examining whether there are any significant differences in the effectiveness of the specific assistance that is provided by the foreign power and/or the overall magnitude of this aid.

Chapter 7 examines the CIA espionage and psychological-warfare operations against the USSR that involved the most important and most controversial Russian exile organization, the People’s Labor Alliance. Operations to infiltrate agents directly into the USSR by plane ended in fiasco due to Soviet counterintelligence, which thwarted the NTS operations and pursued measures to penetrate and subvert the émigré organization from within. In response, the CIA turned to a strategy of utilizing the NTS as an instrument of psychological warfare, spreading disinformation about the exiles in order to incite the Soviet state into costly countermeasures. Such an effort to manipulate the fiction of émigré political influence demonstrated the increasingly complex and marginal-gains nature of Cold War competition between intelligence agencies.

Chapter 1 describes the phenomenon of state organized crime. It analyses the context in which state organized crime occurs, highlighting the criminogenic mechanisms at play in ‘shadow states’ and kleptocratic regimes. It discusses the motives underlying the involvement of state officials in organized crime, showing that state organized crime may be committed not only for the perpetrators’ personal profit, but also in pursuit of state policy or broader ideological objectives such as international terrorism. It further identifies the actors involved in state organized crime and the means through which it is perpetrated, stressing that state organized crime is committed by senior state officials abusing their authority and using the material and human resources of the state for criminal purposes.