But instead of quibbling over fringe details, let me reiterate the main point that I am arguing. Established orders, especially those backed by military/police power, do not fall or cave in simply as a result of domestic protest or dissent. The ruling class can almost always suppress or neutralize dissenters - history is abundant with examples. The only time when dissenters have a chance of succeeding is when the ruling class loses it capacity to suppress dissent by force, either because that capacity has been substantially eroded or the cost of suppression is too high, i.e. threatening the regime stability. That usually happens when an outside force undermines the current ruling classes' capacity to suppress dissent or substantially raises the cost of that suppression.
Contrasting Cambodia's Pol Pot rebellion and Kenya's Mau Mau uprising can be illustrative here. In both cases, a rebellion was launched by armed insurgents whose main base of support was the rural population (with rather limited urban support.) In both cases, local authorities backed by colonial powers launched a counter-offensive.
In Kenya, the authorities succeeded. In fact, Kenyatta, who sided with the Brits during the insurgency, was thereafter rewarded by the colonial masters with a greater say in the colonial government, which eventually opened the door to a sovereign national government under his leadership. In Cambodia, by contrast, the regime failed and the insurgents eventually took over.
Why? Because in Cambodia the regime was destabilized by foreign influences (mostly Chinese and Vietnamese, but Americans also played a role) whereas in Kenya there was little foreign "meddling" except the Brits giving their support to counter-insurgency. That demonstrates my thesis that foreign intervention that undermines the regime's capacity to fight insurgents or dissidents makes an enormous difference for the success or failure of the insurgency or dissent.
Of course, it is also interesting to ask what would have happened in the absence of the said insurgencies. I am inclined to think that in Kenya it would not have made much of a difference - Kenya would still have gained independence and Kenyatta would still have formed the first national government. Cambodia, otoh, would likely have been much better of without Pol Pot - it is hard to argue against that - but whether it would be closer to Thailand or to Burma today is an open question.
Wojtek
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>wrote:
> "Timeline got fucked up " Silvio Dante
>
> Wojtek wrote:
>
>
> The managers of the US empire was fighting the war in Vietnam with a
>> conscript, racially segregated army that was increasingly demoralized and
>> fragging their own officers.
>> They were losing not only ground but also their "battle for hearts and
>> minds." Race riots at home was the last thing they needed at that time. The
>> brewing tension would further undermine their war effort. So they come up
>> with War on Poverty.
>>
>
>
> Both fragging and escalation of the war in Vietnam come after "they come up
> with War on Poverty"
>
>
> http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/vietnam/us/movie.html
>
> "During the years of 1969 down to 1973, we have the rise of fragging - that
> is, shooting or hand-grenading your NCO or your officer who orders you out
> into the field," says historian Terry Anderson of Texas A & M University.
> "The US Army itself does not know exactly how many...officers were murdered.
> But they know at least 600 were murdered, and then they have another 1400
> that died mysteriously. Consequently by early 1970, the army [was] at war
> not with the enemy but with itself."
>
> http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-Viet2b.html
>
> As a domestic policy innovator, LBJ hit the ground running in 1965. His
> legislative accomplishments included securing congressional passage of the
> landmark Voting Rights Act and numerous great society programs including
> Medicare. Again, to avoid the tradeoff between "guns and butter," decisions
> about Vietnam were not highly publicized. Nonetheless, there were several
> decisions made in 1965 that would essentially "Americanize" the war and
> increase the commitment to levels that were feared in the policy discussions
> of the early 1960s.
>
> The "story" of decision making throughout the remainder of the Johnson term
> was the escalation of American involvement. As the following graph
> demonstrates, the number of troops stationed in Vietnam steadily climbed in
> the years from 1965 to 1968.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society#Major_programs
>
> The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of
> 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a
> variety of community-based antipoverty programs....
>
> The War on Poverty began with a $1 billion appropriation in 1964 and spent
> another $2 billion in the following two years. It spawned dozens of
> programs.... The most important educational component of the Great Society
> was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965,... The Bilingual
> Education Act of 1968 offered federal aid to local school districts in
> assisting them to address the needs of children with limited
> English-speaking ability
>
>
>
>
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>