A good book, made into a better movie. The events may have been partly inspired by the “Business Plot,” a rather absurd fiasco wherein a number of businessmen may have been trying to put together a coup d’etat, not to remove Franklin Roosevelt from office, but to make his office irrelevant. Their model, apparently, was Mussolini and his supercession of the power of the Italian King and Parliament.
Ian Toll, in his (excellent) history of the founding of the U.S. Navy, Six Frigates, suggests that the Presidency of Samuel Adams was so unpopular, there was a chance that Alexander Hamilton would act to relieve him of office, and put himself in power as a kind of American Napoleon.
In another thread I asked about how dictatorships maintain control over all the levers of power, and it was mentioned that in autocracies the military is divided between various groups and segments, and they do not cooperate. The army may stage a coup but the navy and marines may not.
So if you break the military up from one large behemoth into several competing and divided groups it is harder to stage a coup. The police, the secret police, the army, the navy, the marines, the elite military units (republican guard, etc) are all divided from each other. If they worked together you may get a coup. But if not, you don’t.
And this is what most dictatorships do - the weird behaviour and sudden odd actions (like N. Korea shelling the south or sinking a ship) are deisgned to ensure that there are crises where nobody can act against the leader without looking like they are undermining the leader/country in a time of crisis. Otherwise, each group is kept separate and made to distrust each other, so that no two or more groups would get together and take power. The USSR for example, used the three pillars - armed forces, KGB, and Party organization - as the division of power almost as efffectively as the USA’s 3 powers, to keep the government stable and coup-proof for 70 years. In more fractious times, apparently the Argentine army, air force and navy junta brass got into a screaming match during the Falklands war, at which point the Admiral told the others “you can’t tell me what I can’t do!!” He ordered the Belgrano out to sea against advice, where it was torpedoed and sunk. In a junta cabinet meeting in South Korea in the 70’s, apparently one officer pulled out a pistol and shot another.
The population might support a coup, for example, when the political leaders are so heavily deadlocked and unable to act effectively that a firm hand seems like the best alternative. If a country falls to the point where Greece just did, and the politicians still refuse to act, refuse IMF loans, refuse to cut spending, start printing their own money to make things work so suddenly inflation means prices double every week… Those senoirs on pensions, civil servants, citizens being hit by a massive crime wave because the police abandon their (unpaid) job, etc. - those will all happily support a strong hand to come in and straighten things up.
The latin american republics famously used to alternate between elected politicians so corrupt and inept they screwed up the economy, to be replaced by army who straightened things out, but then became so repressive (and also eventually corrupt) that a popular uprising replaced them with elected government. Rinse and repeat.
Consider - how bad would things have to be, economically and crime-wise, before you would welcome martial law? That was the situation in many of those countries.
Not exactly,and i had this explained to me by a chap who was there at the time (and probably a communist, though probably not a spy!) In the 30’s some saw the rise of Fascism as such an awful thing and while many governments appeased or even sympathised with the Fascists only Communist Russia seemed to be a potential bastion against it. So they joined the Communist party. A few ended up either trapped or recruited to the cause.
Actually, it was the first time I’d ever heard the notion (Alexander Hamilton contemplating removing Samuel Adams from office by military force.) I’d really like to read more on the subject; does anyone know a source that covers it in more detail? (Or is it debunkable?)
But, y’know, never trust those young, handsome, dashing, intelligent, ambitious artillery officers! “Emperor Alexander the First.” Nice ring to it…
