Regime Change
It occurs to me, that this is how regime change happens. From the people. The right wing strategy of imposing regime change failed so completely because it never understood that only the people of a nation could change its regime. We threw out King George III. The Russians threw out the communist hardliners in 1991, after their attempted coup of Gorbachev. The Iranians themselves threw out the American-installed and supported Shah, and the regime they brought to power then has turned on the same people now. If that regime is going to be thrown out now remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: the only people that can the regime are the Iranians themselves.
DD
Agreed … in part. But just to take your American example: without credit from the Netherlands and the military intervention of the French (and to a lesser extent the Spanish) we would possibly not have won the American Revolution.
That is true, Steve, but how did the Revolutionary War start? Did the Netherlands and France look at King George’s tyranny, decried it and invade to force regime change?
No. We revolted first, and it was years…. YEARS … before the promise of French military assistance actually materialized.
But DD both the French and the Dutch were significantly messing in American colonial and British imperial politics the whole time.
Neither did it because they decried British tyranny, but because the power politics of the day mandated their support of anybody who would cut into the Empire’s power.
Today we have war for oil; the world war of which the American Revolution was only a part could have just as accurately have been called war for sugar.
Your central point is true: for a revolution to succeed it must have broad popular support and be initiated for “internal” rather than “external” reasons.
That having been said, however, few popular revolutions in modern history have succeeded without significant foreign support and even intervention.
Which should not be read as me shilling for US intervention in Iran, because I’m not.
Did any of you hear Loudell’s sound-byte (the one where the segment replays parts of a day-old or couple-days-old interview) this morning? Apparently, one of the clerics has gone to officially request that Ayatollah Khamenei be removed. That is freaking HUGE for that request to be made, plus he’s apparently an ardent supporter of Ahmadinejad. If successful, I can’t help but to wonder if that would lead to major reverberations in the Middle East.
And we have been meddling in politics of the Middle East for decades, most dramatically in Iraq. And our intentions were not noble, just as the French and Dutch’s intentions were not noble either. Their intent was to oppose England, not support America.
I am now thinking through a list of popular revolutions.
1979 Iran — it had no real international support, quite the contrary, it had real international opposition.
The French Revolution in the 1790’s — We advised but did not intervene explicitly
The Russian Revolution in 1917 – no international support
1959 Cuba — how involved were the Soviets? I don’t know. We know they were involved in the 60’s, but how about during the actual revolution?
1991 Russia – no international intervention although foreign media were present and encouraging.
1989 Eastern Europe — no international intervention, although foreign media were present and encouraging.
Please correct me if I am wrong, Steve, but all of these were successful popular revolutions and all of them succeeded without overt international intervention.
Add to the the Orange Revolution in the Ulkraine and the Velvet Revolution in Czechlovokia.
Now there are examples of revolutions that failed: Tianamen Square in China and the Hungarian Revolution in the 50’s.
DD
Working right now, but I will get back to you. Let this suffice:
1979 Iran had significant corporate support, ironically [given how it played out] and some under-the-table Soviet support. We played a major part by withdrawing previous support from the Shah.
French Revolution in the 1790s: massive European meddling in the first phases of the revolution which turned around and bit them on the ass later. The US was hardly a significant enough world power to intervene, but we did continually attempt to run the British blockade…
Russian Revolution in 1917: ironic support by the Germans, who shipped Lenin back into Russia, and there is massive international intervention/support during the Russian Civil War, as well as in the Russo-Polish War in 1920
1959 Cuba–the foremost historian of the period (and I, like you, am not an expert) Hugh Thomas, who does portray the Soviets as being involved, albeit more in a string-pulling way that direct intervention
1991 Russia is a special case deserving of its own thread
1989 Eastern Europe–we did make attempts to support the Solidarity movement in Poland, played a background role in the fall of the Romanian regime, but took back seats in both cases to interventionist policies of France and Germany
Tianamen Square, I’d argue, had not become a revolution
Aside from Hungary in 1956 for unsuccessful revolutions that failed for lack of external intervention I would add Ukraine 1944-1948, Czechoslovakia in (I think) 1972, Biafra (Nigeria) in the late 1960s…
Then there are revolutions or power changes we intervened to stop: Guatemala in 1956…
My point is that the historical record is a lost more ambiguous and a lot less pristine than you suggest
My central point, which you agree with, is that regime change must come from within.
Conservatives seem to be suggesting that we take overt action in Iran to support the Reformists. I am not sure what that means, but at the very least it means direct US intervention in some way (financial, technical, military, etc.)
Every foreign policy expert says that would be counter productive.
So while direct and overt intervention has worked in the past in some revolutions (and others you listed there was indirect assistance, not direct intervention), it will not work here.
Completely agree with that.
While I think Iran is on the road to a popular revolution, if you use America as a rough guide, we are much closer today to 1765 than 1775.
But these days we want everything to run more quickly.
But they do run more quickly. News from Europe took three weeks by boat to get to New York back then. Now it takes three seconds.
We’ll(USA) be blamed in some way if this revolution is, or is not sucessful.
If it suceeds the Arab world will somehow say the US was covertly involved.
If it does not suceed we’ll be accused of not doing enough to help it suceed.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
See what I mean.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31380861/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa
We can’t do much to change Iran. It’s up to Iranians to do it. Anything we try will probably be counterproductive.