New regime, old plant and equipment

On political legitimacy, military targets, and why you should allow a replacement team the opportunity to do the job right

Suppose for a moment that you were trying to design a plan for lasting, positive regime change in an adversarial country. One of the most important things you could do for the new regime is to ensure that they could focus promptly on securing the consent of the public through legitimizing actions -- cleaning out corruption, reducing oppressive tax burdens, and responding competently to public demands. Decent governments have failed for their inability to “deliver the goods”, and indecent ones have managed to rule places for decades by looking like the best competent option.

■ Blowing up power plants and other civilian infrastructure is a sure way to smother any potential rehabilitation effort in the womb. Getting the proverbial trains to run on time is hard enough in good times. It’s vastly harder to do when the infrastructure has been torn apart. Infrastructure, generally, is expensive, slow, and difficult to install, meanwhile oversight is difficult to achieve since the invitations to dishonesty are so many.

■ Any new regime can have staying power only if it can succeed in earning some of its credibility by doing the job right. It’s extremely hard to do the work of rebuilding without the lights on.