Is it possible to overthrow dictatorships?

Private ownership of guns.

The best way for the people to unseat a dictator with a strong military is through guerrilla warfare. The ability to strike when an opponent is unsuspecting then running to hide before they can counterattack helps to even up the odds a lot. Rioting on the streets doesn’t actually do too much other than to put on a show.

“Private ownership of guns.” if that were true you wouldn’t have had 8 years of bush

Pitchforks and guillotines!
Just invade the capital with millions of peasants in a Phalanx formation, replacing fallen insurgents with the line behind them, using the front lines as shields practically, until you arrive at the dictator’s hideout to make him a head shorter.

I can take three quality snipers and pin down an entire battalion of experienced and well-armed soldiers.

Destroy the under lying infrastructure.

The middle east rebels are equipped an old AK47 does just as much damage if not more than an M16…but they have no national plan. They have poor communications and poor strategy if any.

They need to find the supply lines and cut them off or sabotage them.

Its easier said than done but the sooner they start inflicting fear into the enemy the sooner they can cut off the head of the snake!

@ragingloli The problem is that the left in this country mostly insists on keeping itself disarmed due to misguided ideas of purity, therefore most of the guns (at least ⅔ by my estimation, and far more of those effective for combat) were owned by Bush fans. Blech!

Guerrilla warfare is definitely the key. Less well armed forces always need to be smart about when they engage the enemy. Guerrillas can never get into a fight they won’t win. They can’t rely on volume of fire. They have to wait until the right time. They have to use IEDs that cost less than 1% to manufacture compared to what they destroy, or a rifle round that costs under $1 to inflict damage on machinery. The Finns did a great job of guerrilla fighting during the Winter War, using mostly hunting rifles and molotov cocktails (where they got that name). And they need the support of the people, if only for sheer material support. In part, it’s a numbers game.

If you’re interested in the subject, you should read Mao’s book. He might have created an authoritarian state, but his tactics about guerrilla fighting is one of the best I’ve read.

If the dictator is ruthless and well armed then as in 1984 resistance is hopeless. The technology of suppressing revolt has become too efficient.

@flutherother – How is this theory? There are limits to power. Sometimes the limits are forced by natural occurrences, e.g. the Black Death pretty much destroyed the feudal system; or by the failures of the rulers themselves (read Gibbons’ Decline and fall of the Roman Empire). 1984 is a horror story, intended to terrify, not instruct. Its main thrust is – you can fool all of the people some of the time (and most of them a lot of the time) – but eventually the oil will run out, the raw materials will become unobtainable, and so forth. Then there will be nothing to rule, only dead skulls grinning at each other. The dream of permanent power is ultimately futile.

Note how, in spite of all the Marxist theory, China already has a middle class. And like all such, its members want their houses, their cars, their jobs and their consumer durables. In time, it might not be a people’s paradise, but it will be a fairly comfortable place to live in for most of its inhabitants; regardless of the wants/demands/whims of the ruling class. And look at places like Myanmar, North Korea, Zimbabwe: the most stupid citizen can see that the emperor has no clothes and the regime will fall through sheer incompetence.

@bea2345 I think flutherother’s point was a powerful military along with the brainwashing and strict policing of the middle class (or in the party as in the book) kills of the ability and desire to rebel. However, even in the book it notes that the poor (proletariat) had the power to effectively rebel, they just lacked the education and direction at that time to do so. Nowhere in 1984 did it imply it is impossible for the poor to gain both the direction or intelligence to do so, just that it is unlikely and would take some time. Dictatorships always thrive on a large population of the poor, and no matter the strength of the military, those poor can rise up and rebel with enough desire and strategy.

1984 is a warning about the power the modern state has to crush the human spirit. The technology I referred to is surveillance technology and military technology, identifying threats and eliminating them. The state itself can act like a terror organisation and if it chooses to do so the people have no chance.

If you want something bad enough, and there are enough people that want the same thing, anything is possible.

Even with surveillance technology, who will look at all the data on each person? Every person in the country would have to be employed by the government to actually keep tabs on that many people. Surveillance tech makes it more difficult to organize a rebellion, but by no means impossible. The only way military tech can stay ahead of a rebellion is through information on it, and if they don’t have that, they can only destroy everyone, leaving bea’s point of only having dead skulls grinning at each other to rule over.

To take down a dictator or any opponent you have to go to the Master:

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.

He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.

Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack.

Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.

Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.

Quotes of Sun Tzu

If one is patent and organized they can take down a dictator with out much of a fight. They need to be patient and formless as Sun Tzu says, attacking from within getting people inside the regime in key areas. Holding their tongue and smiling in the dictator’s face while they line up alliances and bribe key underlings. Then like a chess game when you have your major pieces in place, you strike; you don’t want to dicker with the pawns you want to go for the king, get the check mate not trade pieces. If the opposition didn’t try to “in your face” it to the dictator but slid up under his wing and make him/her think you have his/her back it is easier to get to their back and slide a dagger in it.

@flutherother

No, the state is not undefeatable. It will be after RFID chips are implanted in everyone, but not yet it’s not.

@CaptainHarley – see the ACLU video at http://www.aclu.org/ordering-pizza. When people are too closely monitored, they look for ways of bypassing the system. I have read that although street crime is low and the social indicators good, the Cuban public service is ridden with small-scale corruption. The same is true of other totalitarian states: China, Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR. Sooner or later these governments change their ways (China) or collapse without a shot being fired (North Korea).

@bea2345

Are you saying that China has changed its ways and that North Korea has collapsed? Last I heard, China was still very repressive, including on things like free speech and freedom of the press and religion, and North Korea was still so rigidly dictatorial that even other dictatorships think it’s dictatorial!

Interesting thread. Egypt as I recall, had the support of the military. That makes a rebellion much easier. If a rebellion has any chance of success, it needs a strong leader. Good command structure and objectives. The problem here is that even if the rebellion succeeds, that same strong leader usually takes over. Benevolent dictatorships are rare. Corruption in infant governments is virtually guaranteed. Odds are that even if a rebellion succeeds, the government will be replaced by another dictator. Maybe better, maybe worse but a dictator nonetheless.

There eventually comes a point in the mismanagement of a country’s government when few enough benefit and so many suffer that a sea change occurs and a critical mass of the population no longer support it. At that point the apparatus of the dictatorship simply falls apart, which is essentially what happened with the Soviet Union (remember them?) and the entire Eastern Bloc of Europe in the latter half of the 1980s.

I am completely flummoxed that the same has not yet happened in North Korea, since that benighted place has been even more flagrantly abused than most of the Soviet Union was. (Maybe it’s due to a perceived Asian characteristic of acceptance, rather than opposition. That was more or less how the Japanese put up with the war machine that took over that country’s government in the 1930s until the military defeat of WWII. That, or those in power are receiving more support from the Chinese than we know, since the Chinese don’t want a failed state full on their border, especially when its citizens are literally starving.)

That pretty much describes what happened in Egypt, so far. It will be interesting to see how (or if!) the jockeying for position among the current players there results in a better lot for average citizens.

Unfortunately, despite all the brave talk of guns, civilian military action almost never results in overthrow of a brutal regime. It didn’t in Occupied France, and it probably won’t in Libya, either. It very nearly didn’t even in the United States, and the supply lines of the occupying force then were stretched very thin.

@WasCy “Unfortunately, despite all the brave talk of guns, civilian military action almost never results in overthrow of a brutal regime.”

That is the unfortunate truth. I’ve read a lot about guerrilla warfare while bored at work, and it really seems that history shows you need a special mix of circumstances for it to work out. It happens, but all too often revolutions that should be acting like guerrillas think they can fight conventionally, and they fail. That’s one of the reasons I mention Mao’s book as a historical reference. The Chinese managed it pretty well in large part because Mao understood some important principles. I’m still doing a lot of research on the Zapatistas, who’ve had limited success. But their main goal wasn’t to topple a regime, either, just to be left alone. And we’ll see how MEND does.

@incendiary_dan , I am not familiar with the mechanics of guerrilla warfare. Suppose, for example, that the Libyan rebels wanted to shift to a guerrilla style of resistance. In broad outline, what would they be able to do? It seems to me that guerrilla warfare involves a lot of hit and run. Occupy a city and run away or hide when pursued, only to reappear when troops withdraw. If the troops do not withdraw then occupy a different city. Is this a rough idea of how it works? I know the objective is to wear down the government forces.

@LostInParadise Yea, that’d be a big part of it. I think the situation they’re in they should (maybe are?) be using a combination of defensive positions and guerrilla strikes. Now that they’ve got some material aid from U.S. supplies they should easily be able to hold fortified positions, while making harrassing strikes elsewhere.

In general, the idea is the strike targets quickly that will cause a lot of disruption, and leave. Actual fighting is often not a chosen strategy, but rather bombing or sniping or something like that. Ambushes are a great guerrilla tactic too, particularly when explosive booby-traps are used. Think about how a dozen guys with rifles and petrol-bombs could take out a squad in vehicles if they had a few explosive charges in the road. It’s got a lot to do with hitting fast and hard.

@incendiary_dan That’s all very well but if the enemy has drones in the sky that are out of sight but filming your every move you aren’t going to be too successful. Guerrilla warfare as we know it is becoming a thing of the past.

@flutherother Because drones can see through walls and floors? Sorry dude, the repeated success of guerrillas disproves that assertion. The Panopticon exists mostly to make you think they always see you.

On top of that, insurgents have easily been able to hack into drones to intercept and maybe even block signals (that is if it wasn’t just the drones going off and doing their own thing, as some suspect).

It’s also increasingly expensive to run these sorts of anti-insurgency technologies. It bleeds the dictators dry.

@LostInParadise I am not familiar with the mechanics of guerrilla warfare. Suppose, for exmple, that the Libyan rebels wanted to shift to a guerrilla style of resistance. No matter the fight the main principals are the same:
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate. You can’t hit what you can see, or hunt down what you do not know is there. If you had a 6’2” 218lb young man fit and full of muscle and an expert in martial arts and pitted him against a 50yr old man of 167lb with a limp you’d more likely bet your money on the young dude. But what if after you placed your bet they said they will be battling in an empty pitch dark aircraft hanger were the old guy would be given night vision goggles and a metal rod and to mask any foot steps loud music will be piped in during the fight. Who do you think will win now? All the strength and skill of the young man is nothing if he can’t see or hear where the attack is coming from. Any counter insurgent group who masters that won’t lose.

He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious. If the old man in this hanger fight stalks and waits for the right time to strike, when the young man wonders into distance or the ambush he set up he will have a more effective attack than trying to take on the younger man head to head.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious. If the old man had not the dark hanger to fight in or some other equalizer if he recognize he can’t win without that and postpones the fight he won’t lose. To try to fight when he has no advantage just out of GP bravado he will get his clocked cleaned and be defeated. A counterinsurgent group needs to know what they can hit and what they can’t unless they are hell bent on martyrdom and not being around for their success, if they have any.

Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack. That is part of Uncle Sam’s big problem, the army can’t protect everything, so they don’t know what “soft targets” to defend and what not to worry about. You know a few high value targets to guard but that is the best you can assure. A counter insurgency that can keep the sitting army guessing as to what will be attacked and when will have the edge. If they are stealthy enough that the attacking army don’t know who or where they are or how many there are it will be hard to defeat them; like cockroaches unless you get them all what is the point? They will just be replaced tomorrow.

If more leaders and generals actually applied the theories of Sun Tzu they would have fewer headaches and lose less lives.

Now I’m inspired to reread Sun Tzu. Thanks @Hypocrisy_Central

@Hypocrisy_Central

Not bad. Not bad! : )

@Hypocrisy_Central You are correct, and I feel that any military commander (General, Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief) that hasn’t studied Sun Tzu and applied his lessons should be removed and possibly beaten.

Of course, the US is cocky enough to think that we have the best technology and enough manpower to be omnipotent and omnipresent. Our defense spending alone exceeds the entire GDP of quite a few nations combined. I think it will take a lot of lives and a few trillion dollars before we even figure out why Russia left Afghanistan in the first place though, since we refuse to act on Sun Tzu’s wisdom or to learn from teh mistakes of others.

@CaptainHarley – Last I heard, China was still very repressive… too true. But the fact remains that the government is less so since the Cultural Revolution and corruption in the public services is chronic. As for North Korea, it is on the verge of imploding.

Of course it is possible to overturn dictatorships through military means. Look at the history of this hemisphere. But I think what is happening is that the new communications technologies have changed the game in a fundamental way. It was a standing joke in my undergraduate years that the Viet Cong did not need spies, all they had to do was read the New York Times. Nowadays they would be ready to go with a cell phone and a laptop. More, an informed, even if small opposition, armed with these technologies, could make make themselves ungovernable. It happened in Egypt and it happened in Tunisia and it is happening in Syria.

@jerv I think it will take a lot of lives and a few trillion dollars before we even figure out why Russia left Afghanistan in the first place though, since we refuse to act on Sun Tzu’s wisdom or to learn from teh mistakes of others.

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. (Sun Tzu) Another lesson Uncle Sam ignores. To go in with ”Shock and Awe” bombing the hell out of everything makes more you have to rebuild once you vanquished your foe and installed the puppets. And if you take into account another Sun Tzu principal; There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited. the longer you are fighting there the more stuff you will blow apart. Where as the Soviets finally got it and figured it wasn’t worth losing everything because you did not want to admit you bit off more than you could chew Uncle Sam will choke before admitting the steak was too much to handle. The government will drive the nation into the dirt as penniless fools before walking away.

Private ownership of guns doesn’t work when being faced with a large military opponent. This is exactly why the Libyan rebels asked for air support and heavy weapons. They do not believe in myths created by the NRA.

How to overthrow dictators? The best strategy is the assassination of the dictator. Here’s a good example how it could be done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Valkyrie#Implementation

The important part is this

“for the maintenance of law and order and at the same time has transferred the executive power, with the supreme command of the military to…”

If the vast majority of military forces follows the new commander the effort is successful.

@mattbrowne Private ownership of guns allows for guerilla action and prevents things from being a totally one-sided affair. Why have we not yet pacified Iraq, and why is Afghanistan totally untamable? Because the citizens are armed.
Would you rather something like North Korea? Just because you take guns away from people doesn’t mean a utopia, or even a decent place like Japan. Dictatorships also like unarmed populi.

@mattbrowne Tell that to the Finns who faught off the Russian tanks in the Winter War.

@jerv – Turning a totally one-sided affair into a somewhat less one-sided affair is not overthrowing dictatorships, which this question is about. So I would agree that private ownership of guns can weaken some dictatorships.

@incendiary_dan – What happens when you take a gun and shoot at a tank? Or are we talking about private ownership of shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles?

@mattbrowne Like aircraft, tanks have severe limits. They can destroy, but not occupy or pacify an area. They can kill but not capture. Since few leaders want to rule a barren wasteland, infantry is required, and infantry can be killed by small arms fire.
By the same token, pyrrhic victory isn’t victory. If a region requires more to control than you get out of it, then you are forced to either leave or be bled dry… much like Afghanistan.

@jerv – I still think that killing the dictator is more effective.

@mattbrowne True, but a good dictator doesn’t show their face anywhere where it could be removed by someone with a decent rifle. They also tend to avoid situations where an angry mob could overpower their guards and lynch them.
It can be done, mind you, but it isn’t easy.

@mattbrowne Yea, they actually did fight off tanks with hunting rifles and petrol bombs, mostly the former. Interesting things about tanks: they need to stop a lot. They require a lot of maintenance during which the crew gets out. They’re also hot inside, so from what I hear from former tank mechanics, you don’t particularly mind getting out every few hours. The Finns would wait until they stopped for repairs, and picked off the crew. Great guerrilla technique.

@incendiary_dan Hot, stuffy, uncomfortable, maintenance-intensive, thirsty (their MPG rating isn’t great), easily immobilized… tanks are not really all that scary when you think about it.

Hmm… not to intrude too heavily into your various guerrilla fantasies here, but…

The Winter War in Finland during the 1939–40 winter, was not “a dictatorship”, was not fought off by “guerrillas” and militia and was probably not lost (by the invader) because of the failure of the equipment that the Russians brought to bear.

Stalin’s Finnish invasion – because that’s what it was – was hastily and poorly planned, executed by an army that had been decimated by Stalin’s own purge of its officer ranks, including the vast majority of its senior officers, generals and field marshals, and replaced by people whose loyalty to Stalin was unquestioned, but whose experience and leadership abilities certainly were, and fought on terrain that was not the same as the blitzkrieg model that the Russians had witnessed from the Germans earlier in Poland. The Soviets also made commanders share executive command with their newly assigned “political” officers, which ‘shared command’ any executive (not just any military commander) can tell you is ruinous to effectiveness.

Where the German tanks and infantry had been able to run rampant over relatively flat plains and farmland, using a network of paved and unpaved roads in Poland, with total air cover, the Russians found a wilderness of trees, rivers, lakes and marshes in Finland, no roads at all, and near invisibility from the air because of the unbroken tree cover. The Finnish Army – not a civilian militia or guerrilla force of irregulars – was completely outnumbered, outgunned, and on their heels for much of the campaign. Nevertheless, they were fighting on their own ground and for their own homes. They had to win.

Given that kind of fight it’s not so surprising that the Finns generally prevailed against the overwhelming odds.

Aside from military campaigns against trained and disciplined troops led by good officers, if a tank rolls into your neighborhood in some way other than a parade, you’d be foolish in the extreme not to be afraid… or running the other way.

@WasCy You have to be a special kind of special to take on a tank head on, so I agree with you there.

@WasCy It was still an example of one population successfully combatting tanks primarily with bolt action rifles. A bit of training isn’t very hard to come by, and many Americans already own more effective combat rifles than those used by the Finns.

But overall it wasn’t the best example. As I thought about it more, the Bourgainville Liberation Army is. If you have the time, view the documentary “The Coconut Revolution”. There are a lot of good lessons to learn from that movie.

I notice that most of the replies so far deal with military options. It could be possible for civil disobedience to overturn dictators: it was ultimately the cause of the end of apartheid and it certainly worked in the United States. It will be said that that is because the respective governments were not prepared to go as far as wholesale massacre or even limited military action (as in the case of the U.S.) But it is evident that access to information has changed things. Every protester killed, beaten, in front of cell phones with cameras, can be on the Web in an instant. It’s a small world we live in.

@bea2345 It depends on the dictator. Not all of them are rational, sane, or any of the other things that would allow non-military solutions to work. Enough are that you are not wrong though.

@bea2345

Not trying to nitpick but I’m curious as what civil disobedience in the US you’re talking about. The revolutionary war was certainly more than civil disobedience and the Civil War well beyond that.

What yoke of tyranny did we throw off through civil disobedience?

@bea2345 In short, I believe you are drastically misrepresenting the struggle for civil and human rights here and elsewhere, and in doing so disrespecting those who gave their lives. This isn’t surprising, because the popular narrative perpetuated by those in power disregards the role of more militant activists, and playing up the role of those figures who are more cooperative to the authorities whether or not they were effective (such as Gandhi, who is widely considered to have been an ineffective collaborator in India).

As @jerv said, not all dictators or other rulers are rational. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say they’re almost all sociopaths, just some of them hide it better. People don’t just revolt for the hell of it. They revolt because there is little or no other choice, and because freedom is worth the risk of death.

I never said anything about nonviolent protest (although I have a personal preference for that). Civil disobedience is behaviour “calculated to lead to a breach of the peace” as lawyers say; and the outcome, hopefully will not include riots, face-offs with the police, etc., etc. But it will, and the “civil disobedience” will no longer be “civil” in any sense. I imagine that US prisons must have been crammed with persons charged with breaches of the peace during the civil rights movement.

My point is a little more sophisticated. Dictatorships simply do not have even the marginal efficiency of a democracy. If the sole function of government is to keep a certain person, or persons, in power, then other functions will suffer. Even after Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union was not exactly a people’s paradise. The breakdowns in supply, the poor quality of services, even problems with food – those indicate a state that is getting ready to break up at the first opportunity, and that is what happened. Cuba at long last is endeavouring to assure a peaceful transition from the current oligarchy, and you know what? the big problem is finding suitable candidates – there was an article in the New York Times. Dictatorships eventually come to an end. The British Empire broke up, almost without a shot fired; upon Tito’s death, Yugoslavia ceased to exist; and it is fairly obvious that the Myanmar government is feeling beleaguered. And yes, @incendiary_dan , I shall certainly read Peter Gelderloos tonight.

One last point. A flutherite asked how much China was spending on controlling the internet. There was discussion, but no reply. But one feels that the output, in money and human resources will in the long run be more than the Chinese can afford. In fact the US is more efficient in this area than almost anybody else (odd, isn’t it?).

@bea2345

The problem with many of these recent uprisings is that they can easily be subverted by those with their own, very different agenda.

I had a marginal interest in the Gelderloos piece, until I got to the section (early on) where he simply presupposes that capitalism is prima facie “oppressive”. As if “everyone knows” this obvious fact, so there’s no sense to make argument to support it. Blah.

I prefer entertaining to pretentious nonsense.

He was mostly writing to an anarchist crowd. But whatev, it is, almost as much as communism.

Try living under both and then say “almost the same”. I dare ya.

Plenty have already. Try being indigenous with this government of occupation. Try being the Third World poor getting your land stolen through predatory neoliberal economics, the indigenous having your entire region flooded some some capitalists can build a dam. I’d dare you if it was possible.

Also, does moving to MA from RI count? :P

You’re assigning way more baggage to “capitalism” than it carries on its own. I’m very aware of peasant farmers being forced off their land to make way for ‘projects’ that people with more power – political power – favor. But that’s a function of politics, not capitalism. Gifts to favored insiders would happen in those places because of the political system in place, regardless of the nominal economic system.

I’m describing the intrinsic activity of a system specifically set up to funnel wealth to those in with wealth already, and specifically stated as a system in which the wealthy have undue influence over the rest of society. I ascribe no “baggage” that isn’t entirely true. I’m sorry if you’re too divorced from physical reality in order to protect your privilege. That’s what capitalism is, that’s what it’s always been, and repetition of the same tired narrative doesn’t change that.

As this is too far disconnected from the question, I’ll stop responding to this line of inquiry.