Why do generals attempting to coup always storm the palace? What happens next? Why do ordinary soldiers follow them? Are they in on the plot?
In: Economics
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There will be as many reasons as there are individuals. But broadly, there’s things like loyalty to your commander, fear of refusing the orders, promises of rewards, promises of a new, better leadership, and just plain ol’ hatred for the status quo and the people in power.
Coups often happen in countries where power is consolidated in a single ruler. Capture that office and you’ve effectively taken command of all the levers of power.
1. The palace is often where the current leader is. They go in to capture the current leader and claim to be the new leader.
2. Next they fight anyone who tries to get rid of them. If no one can, they become the de facto leader. Anyone that doesn’t follow the new leadership will be removed.
3. Commanders of the troops are probably in on it. The individual soldiers may or may not know beforehand.
Generals don’t always “storm the palace,” but yes, usually there is a takeover of the physical buildings where the current government officials are. That’s done for a few reasons, the first being that you have to remove the existing officials from being able to contact allies, or use any channels of power. Second, there is a great symbolism to it: a coup general stepping in front of the White House to declare that he has taken over “for the good of our country” reads as much more authoritative than the same announcement from in front of a Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
What happens next varies. If the existing government has military support of its own, you often get a civil war, with fighting between different areas. Who says they control the government doesn’t matter that much at that time. If there is no established resistance, the governing council convenes and tries to put its people in key positions so they can run the various departments of government. Usually they will first focus on eliminating any trace of the previous government to avoid an attempted return. Usually others vying for power will be quashed. After that, it depends on how ruthlessly the unelected want to govern. You could proceed to full totalitarianism if you can and want, or you can transition toward something more benign and stable, or whatever. You’re just in ordinary history now.
Ordinary soldiers usually follow for a mixture of reasons, but the main three are this:
* Power. If you’re a soldier of the governing elite, you get way more perks in the country than a soldier of a government that doesn’t need you.
* Fear. Some soldiers might not want to participate (and many of these are purged before the revolt) but are afraid to leave because they would make themselves targets for being disloyal to the new rulers.
* Esprit de corps. Some soldiers may truly believe that they’re doing the right thing, and even if they aren’t sure, they don’t want to let their comrades down. (Stories from policement used by the Nazis to commit horiffic war crimes in Poland show that many of them didn’t leave because they didn’t want to abandon their colleagues to do horrible things alone.)
Usually the head of a military branch or unit, someone with huge influence over their soldiers and equipment, isn’t happy with the way things are running. Over time they have installed people into their ranks who are loyal to them and will follow orders without question. At some point they feel their numbers and equipment could take on the rest of the government forces or can catch them off guard and consolidate further power quickly by winning alliances with opposition politicians, businesses or other military units before the government has time to react and build up their forces.
In some cases this works, especially if the government is fractured or key battles are won quickly and early. But sometimes there is enough opposition or maybe no real willingness to complete a coup from the attackers, which gives time to nullify the threat and restore order.
The Bolivia threat yesterday looked like someone who was a bit pissed off and thought he could force a change, however, he failed to realise that opposition forces & voices outnumbered his own.
Well, I guess they previosly have made sure those soldiers will follow, one way or another.
In the simplest terms, you have the hard-core current government and you have the hard-core coup members.
Then you have everyone else, who mostly don’t want a civil war, dont want to be jailed and don’t want to hanged from the neck until they are dead. Everyone else includes civilians and military forces.
The job of both hard-core sides is to convince everyone else they are in power, resistance is futile, and any resistors will be jailed or hanged from the neck until they are dead.
Once one side can convince enough of everyone else, they win, and everyone shifts to their side to save their own necks, at least nominally enough to end the coup and have the other side lay down their weapons.
Now, how a coup does that is varied: capturing the other side’s leaders helps but so does simply shutting them up by capturing the media, or trapping them outside the country, or turning off the internet and using confusion. The current government wins by appearing in control, by continuing to publicly and privately issue orders or having civilians and the military publicly rallying for them.
The important thing is for the winning side to have the *appearance* of enough control to both civilians and the military. Storming the Palace is one way to further that appearance.
Coups have two objectives: 1. seizing the symbols of power, and the and 2. Maintaining a facades of normalcy.
If executed successfully power is transferred to the coup leaders and by the time the rest of the world finds out it’s a fait accompli if they ever do.
If done poorly they are exposed as attempting a coup and will be arrested or shot.
The first thing a coup in progress does is sow confusion, seizing or disabling news, radio and infrastructure to restrict information and movement of personnel. Then disrupt the normal chains of command by detaining important officials and generals to prevent them from becoming nuclei of resistance.
This then causes the pre-existing security forces to split into a much more manageable loyalist faction and a much larger majority of pragmatists who default to inaction in the absence of clear commands, both of whom are rendered blind and deaf to the coup.
Next the conspirators seize the symbols of power be it the palace, parliament house, senate, or throne to prevent a legitimate authority of declaring them as such.
Now the final step is declare to the country and world that nothing untoward has happened and maintain the facades of normalcy. At this point the conspirators fully appear as the legitimate authority and thus have the full backing of the pragmatist faction. That could even at this point declare the loyalist forces to have attempted the coup and purge them.
EDIT: typo
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