Democratic states sometimes engage in covert interventions—sometimes involving forcible regime change—against other democracies. Critics charge that these interventions raise doubts about the robustness of the “democratic peace.” I argue that they require analysts to rethink some aspects of democratic‐peace theory. Democratic states base their behavior toward other democracies on expectations about the future trajectory of their regimes: whether, and to what extent, those states will likely remain democratic in the future. When they expect democracy to persist, the constraints of the democratic peace operate. But when democracies expect another state's democratic character to break down, or decay, they prove more willing to engage in covert forcible regime change. I test my dynamic version of democratic‐peace theory by examining US efforts to forcibly depose Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh (1953) and Chile's Salvador Allende (1970–1973). The framework developed here helps to resolve a longstanding anomaly for the democratic peace—secret interventions between democracies—while also providing policymakers with a clearer sense of the stakes associated with covert democracy promotion and subversion.

States wishing to use force in the modern era frequently face strong incentives to exploit secrecy. Successful covert operations can reduce the likelihood of unwanted escalation with powerful rivals and help leaders conceal unpopular actions from domestic and foreign audiences alike. The many benefits of secrecy, however, can only be realized if covert operations remain covert. We argue that access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) is a critical factor that increases the chances that a covert mission will be exposed. As a result, leaders are much less likely to reach for the quiet option when a potential target has dense ICT networks. We illustrate our mechanism through US national security archival vignettes. We test our argument using a dataset of declassified US military and electoral interventions intended to subvert incumbent regimes throughout the Cold War. The core finding, that leaders are less likely to pursue covert action relative to alternative options when the chances of exposure are high, holds across five distinct measures of ICT networks as well as different model specifications and placebo tests. Our findings suggest that Cold War-style covert operations may well be a thing of the past in an age where communication and media technologies have proliferated to the far corners of the globe. We advance debates on communications technologies, covert action, and political violence.

This chapter summarizes the central argument and empirical findings of the book. It begins by demonstrating that the legal theory developed here outperformed alternative explanations centered on escalation control, domestic politics, and nationalism. It also shows that the argument travels beyond the Cold War and outside of Latin America by exploring America’s various interventions in Iraq from 1991 to 2003 and Obama’s varied responses to civil wars in Libya and Syria during the Arab Spring. The chapter concludes by suggesting avenues for future research and highlighting the book’s scholarly and practical implications.

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