I’ve recently been reading about Roman history and was amazed at the amount of power plays not only from politicians but from the military. Thinking about it some more, it makes perfect sense as the military can force its will on the government, and military leaders are in a prime position to use this ability?
Why is this no longer true? I know there have been military coups in recent times, but from my non-professional perspective it seems we have much less of them.
Ancient Rome had a lot of military coups and things because it was, in effect, a military dictatorship, where political legitimacy was based around the army. Leaders were able to rule because they kept the army happy and rewarded the soldiers.
I don’t know that it really does happen much less often today. It doesn’t happen in the US or Western Europe, for instance, because the internal legitimacy of our governments aren’t based around military strength, and we have a tradition of civilian control of the military. But this handy Wikipedia page:
lists 8 military coup attempts since 2010, and that doesn’t include things like what happened in Libya and what’s happening now in Syria, where a large portion of the military has rebelled against the government.
Looking at the list here:
I don’t think you can claim it has gone down. There has been many coups in the last 10 years even in countries considered stable democracies like Thailand and Fiji.
And in Ancient Rome, the amount of coups fluctuated wildly. There was long periods of orderly succession and then there was “the year of five emperors” and so on.
The threat has certainly not gone down over here. I think I’m counting 20 successful and unsuccessful coup atempts since 1912, including the 1932 one that overthrew the absolute monarchy. Just since 1980, there have been four – two unsuccessful attempts in the 1980s and the successful ones of 1991 and 2006.
And the military has recently been denying rumors of a fresh coup coming up, and such denials are always an ominous sign.
You need the US and/or NATO to stage a good coup anymore.
Yeah, we do tend to throw the best coups don’t we? But the hangovers are brutal!:smack:
In an unstable dictatorship, power is everything, and the military tends to have the most power.
In democracies (functional ones) there is a lot more control derived from “consent of the governed”. As long as everyone plays by the same rules, the army is not a big player. Plus, with freedom comes control problems. If some general arrested the president, congress and the senate, declared himself emperor, and tried to tell the government what to do - what are the odds anyone would obey? What are the odds even a division of his own troops would obey?
Coups tend to happen in more liberal societies when there is severe economic or social turmoil, and people would welcome a firm hand in control - the equivalent of martial law all the way up - IIRC, the case recently in Thailand? Even the threat of this may make compromise among the civilian politicans easier.
Some commentary on North Korea, for example, says that a lot of what we see as weird or irrational behaviour is the leader of the moment playing factions off against each other to ensure on group can get together and take him out. Be sure the army of the west doesn’t want the army of the south in charge, neither will want the secret police chief running things, etc. Stop any group from conspiring to bring you down; starve each group of things like fuel and ammunition so they can’t get close to taking out the leader; put your relatives in charge of things (but keep an eye on them to, and play them against each other). Anyone looks to popular, arrest them or send then off to the remote areas away from any support. Saddam apparently also played this game, as did Ghaddafi.
Harold Wilson (UK PM in the 60’s and 70’s) it seems worried about a coup by the British military. And in the book Spy Catcher is is expanded. Peter Wright claimed the Wilson was a Soviet spy, he was investigated by the CIA and MI5 who decided he wasn’t though. But suspicion lead to a suggested plot. From the book “Walking on Water” comes this quote about a meeting between Mountbatten, King, Cudlipp, and Sir Solly Zuckerman
“”[Cecil] awaited the arrival of Sir Solly and then at once expounded his views on the gravity of the national situation, the urgency for action, and then embarked upon a shopping list of the Prime Minister’s shortcomings…He explained that in the crisis he foresaw as being just around the corner, the Government would disintegrate, there would be bloodshed in the streets and the armed forces would be involved. The people would be looking to somebody like Lord Mountbatten as the titular head of a new administration, somebody renowned as a leader of men, who would be capable, backed by the best brains and administrators in the land, to restore public confidence. He ended with a question to Mountbatten- would he agree to be the titular head of a new administration in such circumstances?“.”… to their credit its seems the majority opinion was it was treason and unthinkable. Though it might be that Mountbatten changed his mind latter…
And Mali is undergoing a coup attempt as I type this.
Once you have your first military coup, the second one is much easier. And by the time you’ve had four or five, they’ve pretty much become accepted practice and they crowd all the other forms of regime change off the map.
Here in America, we’ve just been lucky and hung on to our military coup virginity.
You might have more, or as many, military coups today because there are so many countries. A google search says there are 192 countries in the United Nations today. I think there were about 50 when it was formed inn 1946 (too lazy to search but in any case the number of countries has drastically increased due to the end of colonialism and the tendency for countries to split up (see Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, etc). While democracy is a messy process, ultimately over decades politicians figure out how to do just enough to keep the people happy, as well as the military, and survive in power. A century ago countries like Japan, Germany and Mexico had problems with coups or having the military heavily involved in politics. But eventually they figured out how to be more stable, usually because they lost a war and a period of outsiders imposing democracy helped.
A lot of the places that were disorganized and ripe for palace coups - the military were the only strong power - have evolved into relatively democratic societies. It’s easier to take over when the regime you are replacing ha a secret police that kept everyone cowed into submission already. It’s harder to take over once people believe they have rights. You try to take ovr and the people refuse to obey, rise up, attack lone patrols; even the recruits refuse to shoot on their fellow citizens, so your troops are unreliable.
This has become the norm in large parts of the world. Greece hasn’t seen a coup since the 70’s IIRC. Central and South America is pretty much all democratic now, it used to be wall-to-wall dictatorships. Same with parts of the USSR, several parts of Asia and a few African countries.
there’s the bit in Wikileaks that the outcome of the recent Egyptian uprising was as much a palace coup as a revolt; the generals declined to enforce Mubarak’s orders because they disagreed with his intntions to make his son the next “president”, like Assad did.
Ha…I can imagine a bunch of disgruntled Malian officers were surfing the Internet at their Officers’ Club in Bamako and saw this thread and thought, “We should totally do that!”.
Just as a personal aside, I knew a number of Wilson’s colleagues at Jesus College, Oxford (where Wilson was an undergrad), and they felt Wright’s claims were absolutely preposterous. Something along the lines of “birther” or “truther” nonsense.
That’s not to say there weren’t Soviet agents in positions of relative power in the UK at various times–the Cambridge Five, for example. And there was a Jesus College grad who was a Soviet spy…but that was Goronwy Rees, not Wilson.
Today’s NY Times headline:
Soldiers Declare Coup in Mali
Yep that’s what MI5 and the CIA found too. Interesting how many spies came from the privileged classes rather than the real workers. Heath would have been a better candidate on those grounds! And open to much easier blackmail too (due to sexual indescrations on Hamspead heath)
Yes, that’s what I found in college in Canada too. Many of the members of the university NDP Party - Canada’s socialist party of the nation - were what I called “Mercedes Socialists”. They saw nothing ironic about driving down to an expensive parking spot downtown in their expensive cars to argue about the need to redistribute daddy’s wealth because that was all that was needed to create socialist paradise. I imagine that, in the extreme, was what happened in Oxbridge in the 20’s and 30’s.
The bright and intelligent sons of privilege believed that their success was solely due to the opportunities that they had from wealth, and therefore if everyone had that opportunity, everyone would be as enlightened, educated, and socially generous and selfless as they were. They neglected the detail that their safety net consisted of those same rich parents.
Whereas those of us who had to work our way through college, and knew the value of a dollar because we earned every one (and took transit to class) and probably had no safety net, tended to be members of the conservative party and believe people had to earn what they got.
the problem with coups in general (sorry)…they are easy when you just replace the top echelon with your own clique. When half a million people show up in Tahrir Square or Wenceslas Square demanding social justice, someone who tries to displace the existing rulers has to consider that they next need to take on those half million people, and consider whether their troops will obey them if they try to repress these people. they did in Syria (somewhat) they did not in Egypt or Tunisia.
At a certain point a coup is not simple. Usually they succeed when the elected politicians have made such a mess that a firm hand has popular support.
Centralization, especially of communications, is what makes military coups possible. In many countries, the government owns all or at least the major radio and television stations, and either runs the newspapers or tells them what they can print. And the government controls the airports and industries and ports or is hand in glove with a small oligarchy who does.
What would the military do if they tried to take over the U.S.? They could send troops to the White House and Capitol building, but then what? Take over every other government building by force? Send troops to 50 capitals? Arrest Rush Limbaugh?
You need to be crazy to want to try to take over the U.S. It’s too big to run today unless every part is working at full capacity. If any piece along the chain fails then Seniors don’t get their Social Security and Medicare. And I wouldn’t want to be part of the poor army that has to face those odds.
Fortunately, such a coup has remained solely in the realm of fiction for 230-some years now: Seven Days in May - Wikipedia
We have George Washington to thank for setting the tone early, when one of his officers suggested he wrest power from a bungling, quarrelsome Congress: http://www.pbs.org/georgewashington/multimedia/heston/lewis_nicola.html
First, crash the economy by running up trillions of dollars in debt, starting senseless wars that drain the treasury, raising taxes to prevent capital accumulation and passing regulations that make it impossible to create new jobs so unemployment soars and more people are dependent on government aid than ever before. Next, slowly start cutting back on social security, food stamps, welfare, etc. payments to these newly dependent people. Then when these people get hungry, desperation will take over and they will take to the streets overwhelming local police forces. People will demand that Washington “do something” and martial law will be declared and the Constitution suspended. And the military will be in control.
But it couldn’t happen here.