Rollback

Two men in civilian clothes with their hands on their backs walk surrounded by three armed men in uniform. Military jeeps are seen in a second plane.
American troops detain members of the Grenadian PRA in 1983.

In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, which means developing a working relationship with that state. Most of the discussions of rollback in the scholarly literature deal with United States foreign policy toward communist countries during the Cold War. The rollback strategy was tried and was not successful in Korea in 1950 and in Cuba in 1961, but it was successful in Grenada in 1983. The United States discussed the use of rollback during the East German uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which were ultimately crushed by the Soviet Army, but decided against it to avoid the risk of a major war.[1]

Rollback of governments hostile to the U.S. took place during World War II (against Fascist Italy in 1943, Nazi Germany in 1945, and Imperial Japan in 1945), Afghanistan (against the Taliban in 2001, though this would fail in the long term with the Taliban returning to power in 2021), and Iraq (against Saddam Hussein in 2003). When directed against an established government, rollback is sometimes called "regime change".[2]

  1. ^ Stöver 2004, pp. 97–102.
  2. ^ Litwak, Robert (2007). Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11. Johns Hopkins U.P. p. 109. ISBN 9780801886423.