Unfortunately, with the Fake and Gayification of first world societies, Luttwak's work on coups is not really relevant. Gene Sharp wrote the playbook that applies to our reality: https://postkahanism.substack.com/p/shikma-reads-sharp
Well also the technology changed, there’s no “central telephone exchange” or “National TV station.”
Your points are correct, I’m just looking at nuts and bolts.
OTOH Gene Sharp’s plan relies on deceit of even the soldiers and police, and everyone,
The Color revolution doesn’t work on anyone who realizes they have been fooled, except aging pensioner voters, Boomer voters. It stops working once the soldiers, police, people take orders from the media, or are facing war/violence.
Gene Sharp and the State Department will never again get that close to destroying Israel, America, Russia, any people who decide to live.
We have. Ok they just got Moldova, they still have Brussels (🤣). No loss.
The flaw in Gramschi; to take a state without force is to take a state without force.
To advanced by deceit, is to fear every waking moment and every dream.
To take government by fraud is to take a Government already bankrupt.
A PhD sociologist colleague of mine, Tormod Lunde, in the late '80s and early '90s, studied coups from 1800 on from three POVs: actually counting them; considering state of military tech, especially defensive weoponry; and modeling them with stats variables, i.e., usual socioeconomic ones plus others such as the participation of coup leaders in previous coup attempts.
The two highest frequency coup states, well above the rest, were Spain (esp. in the 1800s) and Bolivia (up to very recently). There were so many in Spain that history texts grossly undercount, one has to go to newspaper archives.
An important variable was whether the coup leader eliminated challengers or not; this was well correlated with the coup leaders experience in previous coups. Saddam Hussein in Iraq is a classic example of an experienced coup leader who eliminated his challengers.
Bolivia was so high because elites protected their latifundia with private armies. And the invention of the automatic machine gun led to a big reduction in coup attempts.
I think your definition of the opposition of Left and Right is good, but another ideological separation is that of openness and equality on the Left vs. closedness and inequality (possibly hierarchy) on the Right. The opposition between capitalism and the Left is then that free market forces will necessarily lead to inequality, as those better at playing marbles will end up with most of the marbles. As you say though there are other oppositions. Free-market capitalism might be opposed to traditional anti-usury laws, or to nationalistic economic protectionism, in which case it might appear leftist.
Great job distilling the principles from one domain (military coups) and applying them to different ones (business startups)! Very engaging, insightful, and well-written essay!
Unfortunately, with the Fake and Gayification of first world societies, Luttwak's work on coups is not really relevant. Gene Sharp wrote the playbook that applies to our reality: https://postkahanism.substack.com/p/shikma-reads-sharp
Well also the technology changed, there’s no “central telephone exchange” or “National TV station.”
Your points are correct, I’m just looking at nuts and bolts.
OTOH Gene Sharp’s plan relies on deceit of even the soldiers and police, and everyone,
The Color revolution doesn’t work on anyone who realizes they have been fooled, except aging pensioner voters, Boomer voters. It stops working once the soldiers, police, people take orders from the media, or are facing war/violence.
Gene Sharp and the State Department will never again get that close to destroying Israel, America, Russia, any people who decide to live.
We have. Ok they just got Moldova, they still have Brussels (🤣). No loss.
The flaw in Gramschi; to take a state without force is to take a state without force.
To advanced by deceit, is to fear every waking moment and every dream.
To take government by fraud is to take a Government already bankrupt.
Information flow is still centralized and goes through choke points.
The color revolutions worked fine in Ukraine, Tunisia, Libya.
But not in America in 24, nor Israel 23 (close) nor recently in several countries… such as Belarus, Kazakistan…
Most coups fail of course.
Libya worked because they supported the rebels by force of arms and air.
Supports my point- Fraud will only take you so far.
They’re done for the moment, although it would be foolish to leave murderous traitors in place in America.
A PhD sociologist colleague of mine, Tormod Lunde, in the late '80s and early '90s, studied coups from 1800 on from three POVs: actually counting them; considering state of military tech, especially defensive weoponry; and modeling them with stats variables, i.e., usual socioeconomic ones plus others such as the participation of coup leaders in previous coup attempts.
The two highest frequency coup states, well above the rest, were Spain (esp. in the 1800s) and Bolivia (up to very recently). There were so many in Spain that history texts grossly undercount, one has to go to newspaper archives.
An important variable was whether the coup leader eliminated challengers or not; this was well correlated with the coup leaders experience in previous coups. Saddam Hussein in Iraq is a classic example of an experienced coup leader who eliminated his challengers.
Bolivia was so high because elites protected their latifundia with private armies. And the invention of the automatic machine gun led to a big reduction in coup attempts.
I think your definition of the opposition of Left and Right is good, but another ideological separation is that of openness and equality on the Left vs. closedness and inequality (possibly hierarchy) on the Right. The opposition between capitalism and the Left is then that free market forces will necessarily lead to inequality, as those better at playing marbles will end up with most of the marbles. As you say though there are other oppositions. Free-market capitalism might be opposed to traditional anti-usury laws, or to nationalistic economic protectionism, in which case it might appear leftist.
Great job distilling the principles from one domain (military coups) and applying them to different ones (business startups)! Very engaging, insightful, and well-written essay!
Is that Martin Shkreli in that coup photo on the far left???
Absolutely loved this article!