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 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 political leadership of the United States discussed the use of rollback during the East German uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, but decided against it to avoid the risk of Soviet intervention or a major war.

Rollback of governments hostile to the U.S. took place in World War II (against Italy 1943, Germany 1945, and Japan 1945), Afghanistan (against the Taliban 2001), and Iraq (against Saddam Hussein 2003). When directed against an established government, rollback is sometimes called "regime change".