Military Engagement: Influencing Armed Forces Worldwide to Support Democratic Transitions

6. Military-Military Relations during Violent Insurrections and Campaigns of Civil Resistance

6 83 Military-Military Relations during Violent Insurrections and Campaigns of Civil Resistance As described in chapters 3 and 4, the long-term trend in world governance is toward more democracy. Dictators and one-party governments can hold onto power for a time—often a long time—but without the consent of their people and the capacity for renewal, they eventually crack and fall. How they crack and fall matters. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that violent insurgencies almost never lead to a democratic outcome whereas successful nonviolent civil resistance movements have a high probability of creating durable democratic gains. These results should not be surprising. The path to victory for a violent insurgency is military victory over a dictator and his supporters by force of arms. This process tends to concentrate power in the hands of those who engage in the violence, often men of fighting age who have little interest or stake in the frustrating realities of democratic governance. The violence imposes heavy costs on the rest of the population in the form of casualties, disruption and internal dislocation, and damage to the economy and critical infrastructure. The fighting, often savage and ruthless, weakens civil society, national unity, and rule of law. All these factors raise the odds against the establishment of democratic governance after the conflict. Blair.indb 83 2/11/13 8:08 PM 84 VIOLENT INSURRECTIONS AND CIVIL RESISTANCE In contrast, the objective of civil resistance is to weaken a dictator’s support from the powerful groups on which he relies for control: the armed forces, government workers, businesses , and religious, cultural, and ethnic factions. Using protests , strikes, boycotts, and dozens of other tactics, opposition groups and ordinary people disrupt an authoritarian regime’s rule, drive up the costs of maintaining the status quo, and ultimately convince regime supporters, including the armed forces, that the dictator can no longer run the country and therefore must go. remaining nonviolent is crucial for an opposition movement to coopt the loyalties of a regime’s supporters. Violence binds the latter closer to the regime, both because it threatens them with injury or death, and, in the case of the armed forces, it makes the opposition a more legitimate target for the use of military force. American soldiers of the international peacekeeping force maintain crowd control as residents of Vitina, Kosovo, protest in the streets on January 9, 2000. (DoD photo by Spc. Sean A. Terry, U.S. Army/Released) Blair.indb 84 2/11/13 8:08 PM 85 VIOLENT INSURRECTIONS AND CIVIL RESISTANCE A 2005 study by Freedom House analyzed the results of revolutions over the prior third of a century. It found that in the twenty cases in which the freedom fighters used violence to remove a dictator, only five (25 percent) resulted in a free and democratic state following the end of the war. Of the twelve instances in which the freedom fighters used exclusively nonviolent means, even though the government forces used violence against them, seven (58 percent) led to freedom and democracy . In the eighteen cases in which the transitions were entirely nonviolent on both sides, seventeen (94 percent) achieved both freedom and democracy.1 Armed Insurrection Armed rebellions are common throughout history and continue to the present. They have ended in recent years in Mexico, Nepal, Libya, and the Philippines, and continue, as this chapter is being written, in Syria, the Democratic republic of the Congo, India, and Yemen. Security forces know how to deal with armed threats to their countries, whether from outside or within. When armed rebels attack army outposts, soldiers defend the outpost and then pursue the armed enemy. When armed rebels capture control of towns or territory, government armed forces plan and execute campaigns to regain control. It is rare for an army to disobey orders—even from a despot—to suppress an armed rebellion and rare, for a period of time at least, for the population not to support the armed forces and the government. Often the government and its forces are ultimately successful in defeating armed opposition. A 2011 study that reviewed 218 cases of violent insurrectionary campaigns challenging governments between 1900 and 2006 found that the governments suppressed 74 percent of them.2 The regional surveys and case studies in volume 2 of this handbook provide several important examples of the range of outcomes of armed revolutionary movements, successful and...