Partnership or Putsch?

Instead, they often seek immunity by running for public office. When a bloody coup against Corazon Aquino s fledgling democratic government failed, the leader of the putsch escaped from a floating prison and then successfully ran for senator.

Such last minute capitulation could mean resignation for the new Greek government and its replacement by EU approved technocrats, as in the constitutional putsch against Italy s Silvio Berlusconi in 2012. In a less extreme scenario, Varoufakis might be replaced as finance minister, while the rest of the government survives.

There are immediate reasons why this is so Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert s government is weak and unpopular, mainly due to the botched 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is even weaker, having lost control of Gaza to Hamas after a violent putsch last year.

Burgeoning oil wealth bolstered the regime s credibility not least by enabling a significant increase in military spending and rising economic and military strength gave the Soviet Union s geriatric leadership a rejuvenated sense of invulnerability. The invasion of Afghanistan was not merely an improvised response to a local development (a putsch in Kabul) it was also a direct result of this trend.

On the Palestinian side, Mahmoud Abbas s Palestinian Authority lost control in 2006 of the Gaza Strip now ruled by an illegitimate Hamas led government and thus cannot speak anymore for all Palestinians. With more than 600 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Hamas s violent putsch, making peace among the Palestinians may be as difficult as making peace between them and Israel.

WARSAW Had the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev not failed, the riots and death recently seen in Xinjiang could have been taking place in Russia. Instead of hearing about a crackdown in Urumqi, Xinjiang s capital, we might be reading about hundreds killed on the streets of Almaty, and columnists would be making comparisons to the bloody crushing of Ukrainian independence demonstrations in Lvov the previous year.

Khamenei s backing of the June 2009 putsch now appears to be a costly mistake. With this single error, he has undermined what had appeared to be a robust post revolutionary course for the first and only theocracy in modern history. The cries of God is Great! have now been overtaken by chants of Death to the Dictator! in recent demonstrations in Tehran, Tabriz, Shiraz, and other Iranian cities.

By June 1991, after quashing a series of challenges to his leadership, he became the first elected president of Russia two months later, real power fell into his hands, after the failed putsch against Gorbachev of August 1991 by conservatives seeking to prevent the Soviet Union s disintegration. For most Westerners and many Russians, his finest hour came on August 19th that year, when he stood on a tank outside the Russian parliament and defied the hardliners who had seized power.