In “You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Seldom Improves Interstate Relations,” Alexander Downes and Lindsey O’Rourke offer important contributions to the study of how foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) affects interstate relations. According to Downes and O’Rourke, states should exercise caution when considering whether to pursue covert or overt FIRC, because neither type of regime change improves relations between interveners and targets by reducing the likelihood of their engaging in future conoict and, in many cases, it makes conoict more likely.1 They imply that the emergence of post-FIRC conoicts marks the failure of FIRC in interstate relations. Two theoretical problems arise from Downes and O’Rourke’s oversimpliacation of the purpose of FIRCs. To begin, interveners may have objectives for engaging in FIRCs other than improving interstate relations, such as weakening rivals and thereby advancing their own security—goals that are at least as important as avoiding future conoict. Consider, for example, U.S. covert FIRCs in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. As John Prados writes, “Afghanistan by itself was of little importance to the United States.”2 The main objective of these FIRCs was to frustrate the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to prevent the spread of Soviet inouence in the region.3 Indeed, the FIRCs forced the Soviets into a long-lasting and costly stalemate, which contributed to

中文翻译：

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重新考虑外国强加的政权更迭的结果

在“你不能总是得到你想要的：为什么外国强加的政权更迭很少改善州际关系”中，亚历山大·唐斯和林赛·奥罗克为研究外国强加的政权更迭 (FIRC) 如何影响州际关系做出了重要贡献. 根据唐斯和奥罗克的说法，各国在考虑采取隐蔽或公开的 FIRC 时应谨慎行事，因为这两种政权更迭都不会通过降低干预者和目标参与未来冲突的可能性来改善他们之间的关系，并且在许多情况下，它使冲突更有可能发生。1 他们暗示后 FIRC 冲突的出现标志着 FIRC 在国家间关系中的失败。Downes 和 O'Rourke 对 FIRC 目的的过度简化导致了两个理论问题。开始，除了改善国家间关系之外，干预者可能还有参与 FIRC 的目标，例如削弱对手，从而提高自身安全——这些目标至少与避免未来冲突一样重要。例如，考虑一下 1979 年至 1989 年美国在阿富汗的秘密 FIRC。正如约翰普拉多斯所写，“阿富汗本身对美国来说并不重要。”2 这些 FIRC 的主要目标是挫败苏联对阿富汗的入侵和3 确实，FIRC 迫使苏联陷入长期且代价高昂的僵局，这导致