The covert action toolkit under fire after revelations of extra-constitutional actions during the Church committee hearings and reports of 1975-76, have been expanded to include economic instruments that are viewed as "soft" power, but cause much more widespread damage. The substitution thesis posits that regime change objectives never faded after the revelations, rather the foreign policy establishment just exchanged paramilitary activity with primary and secondary sanctions

This contemporary application episode examines the Russo-Ukrainian peace negotiations from the perspective of how the Iran war, launched on February twenty-eighth, 2026, materially altered the negotiating landscape in Russia’s favor.