Bereitschaftsbeitrag

Zur Front

18. Januar 2021

Not much civil sense around these days.

I'll try to restrict myself to the completely obvious.

The status quo puts more restrictions on the military's soft power than hard power. Hence the military is more likely to see its soft power as a problem than its hard power. Which begs the question under which circumstances a military coup furthers the military's soft power.

Well, there is only one condition under which it does that, namely when the civilian government can't persuade the public to do what is necessary. Hence, when the military plans a military coup in order to increase its soft power, it is contingency planning.

Having said that, let us look at what would have to be taken care of. The first thing the military does in a coup is to take control of the media and suspend elections and elected officials. Hence, in order to minimise resistance, the dearness of these things to the public would be undermined.

Since the military would almost certainly have a parallel plan in place to increase its soft power, one that does not involve a military coup, it would have civilian political allies, and the question arises how to deal with them when switching from one plan to the other. There are two options:
  1. giving them formal control, feigning some kind of civilian nature of the government,
  2. integrating them in a subordinated position.
Experience has given the military good reason to avoid the former approach, so it's a pretty safe bet that it would try the latter. However, in that case there must be an exterior event that severs the alliance so that the former allies won't feel disenfranchised, but turn to a new hope instead.

Well, I'm not saying there is any conclusiveness in that, but if there was any civil sense worth talking of, the rather humbug political division would be widely rejected and civilians would insist on treating each other civilly.

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