The paper from the Council on Foreign Relations in New York says U.S. policy should focus on “sound recovery and reconstruction planning” and plan to avert or minimise chaos in a political transition which, under worst-case scenarios, could include civil strife, state collapse and destabilisation of the Southern African region.

U.S. policy towards Zimbabwe has been to pressure the Mugabe government through travel and financial sanctions targeting senior officials, while providing food aid and assistance battling the HIV/AIDS pandemic that has decimated the population.

Author Michelle Gavin, an international affairs fellow at the Council, suggests Washington and the international community could galvanise key Zimbabwean players into action by making clear the benefits including major donor funding that would be released on the institution of reforms, potentially speeding Mugabe’s exit.

U.S. officials should recognise that they "probably cannot compel President Mugabe and his loyalists to step aside." But, "engaging with other members of the international community now to map out a path for Zimbabwe's recovery is more than an exercise in advance planning," Gavin argues.

"By working multilaterally to build consensus around governance-related conditions for reengagement, and by marshaling significant reconstruction resources in an international trust fund for Zimbabwe, the United States can help establish clear incentives for potential successors to Mugabe to embrace vital reform."

In doing so, "the United States can encourage and even hasten constructive forms of potential political change by affecting the calculus of those who are in a position to trigger a transition," writes Gavin. She adds that recovery and reconstruction planning can also help avert "worst-case scenarios of civil conflict, state collapse, and regional destabilisation from taking hold during any future attempted political transition."