The people of Belarus put this to test not that long ago. Massive numbers of people came out, factories went on strike, even people from the military and police spoke out against the regime.
Turned out that in this day and age when the governments have unprecedented powers of surveillance and the ability to cut anyone from the respective financial system, a revolution is a really hard thing to pull off.
If the British had the kind of power that even half-competent governments have today, the American revolution would never have succeeded.
You have to both outnumber the loyalists to certain degree and show significant determination. Euromaidan did that with 800,000 protesters at its peak. As a percentage of the population that's less than what Belarus saw, but at the same time Yanukovych had significantly fewer people willing to do his bidding than Lukashenko.
>Euromaidan did that with 800,000 protesters at its peak.
Euromaidan succeeded because it also had massive support and influence from the western powers and from the western(mostly US) itelligence agencies to make the pro-Russian regime change happen.
Similar to the fall of the Berlin wall and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, it was a decades long effort from the US itelligence agencies, they didn't just sit around and wait for the local population to revolt.
People ignore how much external interference these revolutions get in order to make regime changes happen.
I was following the events very closely. The most obvious foreign interference I saw was Russian spetznaz being brought in as reinforcements to try and suppress tbe protests for longer.
Yeah obviously, but I never claimed there wasn't interference from both sides since Russia would be stupid not to have interfered, but it's not like CIA, who also would have been stupid not to have interfered, wears high visibility vests with their org's logo while on duty abroad or posts their ops on Wikipedia for everyone to see.
If the public knew everything the CIA was doing, they would be not very good at their job. Stuff like this is usually declassified only 50+ years later or sometimes never. So please, let's not use the "I've only seen Russian agents in the streets but not CIA" as some sort of argument since that insults everyone's intelligence.
Agree! I’m not saying CIA (or whichever other three letter agency) were not involved in any way. But the way I see this, if I was out in the streets trying to get rid of a pro-Russian stooge making my country an autocratic puppet regime, I would be thankful to whomever is paying for the tea, or helping in any other way.
" half-competent governments have today, the American revolution would never have succeeded."
tbh British empire at that time still has Canada,India,Australia and not counting 'small size' territory they has, Yes they can supress American Revolt absolutely but it would be a burden and not cost effective at the same time. colonies is bussiness after all
if they can't produce wealth then why fought so hard to defend this land???
> The people of Belarus put this to test not that long ago. Massive numbers of people came out, factories went on strike, even people from the military and police spoke out against the regime.
Did they, though... The Western media depicts all color revolutions as such movements, complete with 'the military speaking out'. They did the same in Venezuela and other places. The 'military guys speaking out' turned out to be Colombian mercenaries who put on the wrong Venezuelan army uniform and whatnot.
They did yeah. There was this whole hashtag-like thing on Telegram where people who had a regime uniform in their wardrobe would stuff it in the trash. It was mostly demobilised conscripts, policemen, and such. There was also one high ranking retired officer who openly spoke out against the regime, who’s in exile now.
Having written that, so yes and no. As in, I don’t think there were many (any?) active service members. That likely would’ve been very dangerous. But people who had close and recent ties with the military, so could be expected to be regime loyalists, yes, plenty.
EDIT: I never follow Ukraine, Russia, or Belarus on “Western media”. I read Russian, so I follow a bunch of Telegram channels from those countries. The protests in Belarus were basically covered live.
One thing the 'reactionaries' (anti-revolutionaries) do is spread propaganda of powerlessness. I'm not saying you are doing it intentionally, but they do it for a reason.
Belarus had 500.000 people show up. But they got beat down. Hong Kong had millions of people show up. But it just led to massive crackdowns. Numbers mean nothing when the guys who own the guns are not on your side.
> Numbers mean nothing when the guys who own the guns are not on your side.
Not saying it will turn out differently, but there are more guns circulating in the US than there are people. Nearly everyone has or can easily get access to a gun. US culture is also quite a bit different, celebrating violence, don't tread on me, etc...
Again, it might not make a difference, but I'm not sure those other situations are comparable.
Something else to note is that military officers swear an oath the constitution, not POTUS (like enlisted do). Asking someone to order or to shoot fellow Americans, particularly if unarmed, would definitely be a test. If something like that did happen, we would be entering a second civil war.
If it actually does come to a new civil war, my money is still on whoever owns most of the military. Small arms are nice and well, but they don't help you a lot when the other guy has got APCs and tanks.
I think it would be an open question as to which side ends up owning most of the military. Bases are all over the US along with national guard. The people in the military are also a pretty diverse group. In a civil war situation I don’t think it would be an automatic siding with DC.
One of the reasons the military has so many independent branches is that it would take all of them to rebel and join the opposing side in order to win. It's impossible to tell how they would side in a real internal conflict and the whole apparatus probably has to break down first before they will ever officially take sides of a force that opposes the federal government. At that point there will be total chaos and the wealthiest people can once again swoop in, amass the most powerful force and take over.
In the US's two most recent wars, the people with small arms outlasted the US military. It happened in 3 of the 5 U.S. wars since WWII, and in the other two there was nobody with small arms.
It's always the people who have never fought in a war that say things like this.
APCs take fuel, require men to run, and need tires or tracks. For $10 worth of chemicals or a little bit of camouflage and some earth work you can make the APC irrelevant very quickly.
Happened in Iraq all the time.
The US military and its members have spent almost 25 years fighting through insurgencies.
(If you spend a lot of time learning to fight against an insurgency, you also spend a lot of time learning how to wage one against a technologically superior force.)
Smaller groups you can outright kill in daylight, but better to get to them first to torture and kill them out of sight.
Once you need to kill 500.000 who are protesting and if violence to quell the hoards wakes up more people who want to see the regime fail.