Smaller groups you can outright kill in daylight, but better to get to them first to torture and kill them out of sight.
Once you need to kill 500.000 who are protesting and if violence to quell the hoards wakes up more people who want to see the regime fail.
Turned out that in this day and age when the governments have unprecedented powers of surveillance and the ability to cut anyone from the respective financial system, a revolution is a really hard thing to pull off.
If the British had the kind of power that even half-competent governments have today, the American revolution would never have succeeded.
not only that, but to sniff out those with whom they transacted. This causes a chilling effect, because secondary sanctions cause just as much harm.
It's also why i am against removal of cash based, anonymous transactions. It is needed, so that the state cannot cut off citizens at their whim.
Euromaidan succeeded because it also had massive support and influence from the western powers and from the western(mostly US) itelligence agencies to make the pro-Russian regime change happen.
Similar to the fall of the Berlin wall and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, it was a decades long effort from the US itelligence agencies, they didn't just sit around and wait for the local population to revolt.
People ignore how much external interference these revolutions get in order to make regime changes happen.
tbh British empire at that time still has Canada,India,Australia and not counting 'small size' territory they has, Yes they can supress American Revolt absolutely but it would be a burden and not cost effective at the same time. colonies is bussiness after all
if they can't produce wealth then why fought so hard to defend this land???
Did they, though... The Western media depicts all color revolutions as such movements, complete with 'the military speaking out'. They did the same in Venezuela and other places. The 'military guys speaking out' turned out to be Colombian mercenaries who put on the wrong Venezuelan army uniform and whatnot.
Having written that, so yes and no. As in, I don’t think there were many (any?) active service members. That likely would’ve been very dangerous. But people who had close and recent ties with the military, so could be expected to be regime loyalists, yes, plenty.
EDIT: I never follow Ukraine, Russia, or Belarus on “Western media”. I read Russian, so I follow a bunch of Telegram channels from those countries. The protests in Belarus were basically covered live.
Not saying it will turn out differently, but there are more guns circulating in the US than there are people. Nearly everyone has or can easily get access to a gun. US culture is also quite a bit different, celebrating violence, don't tread on me, etc...
Again, it might not make a difference, but I'm not sure those other situations are comparable.
Something else to note is that military officers swear an oath the constitution, not POTUS (like enlisted do). Asking someone to order or to shoot fellow Americans, particularly if unarmed, would definitely be a test. If something like that did happen, we would be entering a second civil war.
I always wondered why north korea is so stable. I think its a mix of military power, media control and chinese support.
