The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Coup D'état' by Edward N. Luttwak - Part 10 w/ John Fieldhouse

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

46 MinutesPG-13Pete continues his reading of Edward N. Luttwak's "Coup D'état." In this episode he welcomes back John Fieldhouse to comment on the first half of chapter 5, the final chapter.Antelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Coup d'ÉtatPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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I want to welcome everyone back to part 10 of my reading of kudetat by edward lutwak john fieldhouse is back how you doing john doing well how you doing sir doing good took a week off cleared my head and um yeah ready to jump back into this got one chapter left uh long chapter i think i counted almost 50 pages so it was not going to be able to do it in one sitting but um to start getting going on it because I'm sure this is the part everybody has been waiting for the chapter five the execution of the coup yeah before before we get into I was just going to say lute wax organization of his chapters doesn't necessarily make the most sense because the strategy and preparation chapters obviously overlap and a bunch of the execution stuff he's already talked about

but this is short for him anyways this is a chapter all right Chapter 5, the execution of the coup d'etat. A couple quotes. As soon as the moral power of normal, as soon as the moral power of national representation was destroyed, a legislative body, whatever it may be, meant no more to the military than a crowd of 500 men, less vigorous and disciplined than a battalion of the same number. Madame de Stahl, referring to Napoleon's coup d'etat. I came in a tank, and only a tank will evict me. Abu Zaire, Yaha.

Is that, do you know how to pronounce that? Yaha? I think it's pronounced Yaya, which is Arabic for John. Okay. Abu Zahir, Yaya, Iraqi, Iraqi, Prime Minister, 1968. All right. Start with the text. The active phase of the coup is like a military operation.

only more so. If the general principle of tactics is the application of force at the right place, the coup achieves this with surgical precision by striking at the organizational heart of the whole state. If speed is very often important in military operations, in the coup it is an essential requirement. But the coup differs from most military operations in one crucial respect. While in war, it is often advantageous to retain some forces as reserves to be used in later and possibly more critical phases of the fighting, in a coup, the principle of total commitment applies. The active stage takes place in one short period of time, and forces held back today will be useless tomorrow. All our forces must be used in our single decisive engagement.

The fact that the coup has practically no time dimension means that we will not be able to correct significant errors made during its execution. In war, tactics can be changed. Weapons can be replaced, plans reshaped, and soldiers retrained on the basis of combat experience. In the coup, however, there will be no sufficient time for any feedback mechanism to work. In this, the coup is similar to the most modern form of warfare, the strategic missile strike, and the time factor places that entire burden of decision-making in the planning stage. Every target must be studied in detail before the coup. The team assigned to seize it must match it in terms of size and composition. Its every move must be planned in advance, and no tactical flexibility can be allowed.

With this degree of detail planning, there will be no need for any sort of headquarters structure in the active stage of the coup. If there is no scope for decision making, there is no need for decision makers and their apparatus. In fact, having a headquarters would be a a serious disadvantage. It would constitute a concrete target for the opposition, one that would be both vulnerable and easily identified. As soon as the coups starts, the ruling group will know that something is happening. But unless coups are very frequent in the country, they will not know what that something is. It could be a mutiny, an insurrection, the opening of a guerrilla war, or even the beginning of an invasion by a foreign power. Yeah, on that, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, please.

the big thing he's talking about not much need for headquarters obviously you're going to have somebody in charge at some level with subordinates in charge you know and radios and whatnot to coordinate them but a lot of what goes into a headquarters that you don't see unless you're in one is battle tracking and management type stuff and like the american military is seen as one of the worst for just growing and growing its headquarters to involve more managerial functions there to the point that it forces every army that interacts with them to basically grow their staffs to the detriment of the rest of their forces. And so this chapter so far is, in a lot of ways, it's a lot more important than even it sounds at first glance, because it really shows how hypothetically an American-style army is completely unfit for this kind of an action.

All right. All these forms of conflict represent threats to the regime. but they are all different in terms of their immediate significance and more important in terms of the measures required to meet them. We should avoid taking any action that will clarify the nature of the threat and thus reduce the confusion that is left in the defensive apparatus of the regime. Our teams will emerge from their bases and proceed to seize the designated targets while operating as independent units. Their collective purpose and their coordination will remain unknown until it is too late for any effective opposition. The leaders of the coup will be scattered

among the various teams, each joining the team whose ultimate target requires his presence. Thus, the spokesman for the coup will be with the teams that will seize the radio, television stations, and the prospective chief of police will be with the team whose target is the police headquarters. As each team will be both small and highly mobile, and as there will be no functioning headquarters throughout the active phase of the coup, the opposition will not have any single target on which to concentrate its forces. In this way, their numerical superiority will be dissipated, and the smaller forces of the coup will have local superiority in the area of each particular target. This will be key to the victory of the coup. Yeah, so the big takeaway here is having a headquarters,

having any kind of an organization works both ways, and anything that you have that there in order to provide, you know, very rigid regimented command and control, something that's also a target for the enemy to destroy, no matter who that enemy is. And along with he says, it's important that you allow the enemy to continue to be confused until you actually take power. It's Sonsu's rule is all wars based on the deception. Don't let the other guy know what you're doing until you've done it. You catch them in the corner of your eye, distinctive by design. They move you, even before you drive.

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All right. New heading. On the Eve. In chapters two and three of this book, we surveyed the planning of the coup in terms of neutralization of the professional defenses of the state and the selection of those targets that would assist the neutralization of the political forces. We analyzed the structure of the armed forces and of other means of coercion, and we saw that much of the armed forces, a significant part of the police system, and some of

the security services could not intervene, either for or against us, in the military. the event of a coup. This was due to their remote location, dispersed deployment, or because their training and equipment was inadequate, unsuitable, and over-specialized. Then we infiltrated the relatively small part of the apparatus that did have an intervention capability so that much of it was technically neutralized and some of it totally subverted. This will ensure for us the neutrality of much of the defenses of the state and the active cooperation of some of its parts. The infiltration in the Army and police has given us an instrument, the units that we have incorporated, and that forms the forces of the coup. Additionally, we have prepared for the

utilization of this instrument by selecting the targets on which it will be used. We have identified the physical targets that must be seized and those that will have to be sabotaged or otherwise interdicted, and we have selected the leaving personalities among the potential opposition, both in and out of the government and prepared for their arrest. But one major task has not been covered in the planning stage. The forcible isolation of the hardcore loyalist forces. Hopefully the strength of those forces we have been unable to infiltrate, assuming they have an intervention capability,

will not be very great. But even if they are weak in absolute terms, we dare not ignore them. To do so would be to invalidate all the measures we have taken to insulate the capital city and ourselves from the intervention of hostile forces. The extreme instability of the balance of forces during the active phase of the coup means that what in other circumstances would only be a minor threat could then have disastrous consequences. If the hardcore loyalist forces are large in relation to our own, we will indeed have to divert a considerable amount of our forces to their isolation. Though we have been unable to penetrate these hardcore loyalist forces,

two things will probably have to be achieved. One, their number, quality, and location will be known to us. And two, our general measures of neutralization will have reduced their overall effectiveness. Their fighting capability will not have been eroded, but as table 5-1 illustrates, their intervention against us will be delayed and disrupted. Table one is the mechanics of intervention of the loyalist forces. Some of this, I believe some of this was covered in chapter two and three, if I'm not mistaken, right? Yeah, most of these charts, it's just, it doesn't make sense to read them out aloud in a format like that.

But, and again, it's imperfect, but he's, a lot of these, the chess game, the move and counter move of things that you'll have to deal with. And again, since we're talking about one internal military, loyalist generally means any person you haven't infiltrated. So that's the big issue. It's like all the techniques we've used in the past to neutralize forces don't work because we weren't able to get in the position to neutralize them. All right. Reading on. Our purpose is not to destroy the loyalist forces militarily.

We can deal with their cadres administratively after the coup, but merely to immobilize them for a few crucial hours. The tactics that will be. used must be exclusively defensive, a ring of blocking positions around each concentration of loyalist forces, or, if this is not possible, a similar ring around the capital city. Thus, though we will be on the strategic offensive in the sense that we are the ones who want to change the situation in general, we will also be on the tactical defensive, and this will give us important technical and psychological advantages. By using defended roadblocks to isolate the loyalist forces, we will put the onus of initiating any fighting on them. Our forces will be consent to wait,

and it will be the loyalist forces that will try to pass through. Should a column of loyalist forces arrive at the roadblock, their leaders will be faced by opposition numbers wearing the same uniform and belonging to the same armed force, perhaps even to the same regiment. Both sides will state that they are obeying orders. But interestingly enough, the orders of the leaders of our forces will probably appear more legitimate than those of the leaders of the loyalist troops. Owing to our arrests and our interdiction of the physical facilities, the legitimate orders will probably have taken an unusual form. The source of the orders to the loyalist troops will probably be somebody other than the appropriate superior in the hierarchy.

The method used to convey them will probably be an unusual emergency one, and the actual orders will likely be indistinguishable informed from ones that might have been issued by the planners of a coup. There's a lot here, too, that's really intelligent. But as he said, part of our goal of infiltration is taking charge of whoever issues the orders in whatever the official procedural way is to these different units. If we can take possession of that, take control of that office, you know, they're not going to have anything that looks like a proper word or, where the guys are actually attempting the coup will have those. And as he said, it's going to be people exercising initiative on their own to stop the coup. And depending where you are, lots of armies don't exactly work around or develop initiative intentionally in their leadership.

You know, there's a reason why coups frequently work, you know, so smoothly in the third world. Whereas when it was intended or attempted in the Third Reich, the SS was able to break it. a few hours, partly because they were trained for initiative and things like that. And to his other point about using roadblocks to block loyalist forces, the easiest way to have a roadblock in place is to make it not look like a roadblock. Everybody understands what construction is. Most people want to avoid construction. So there are lots of ways to control an intersection without making it look like you're intentionally controlling an intersection. And if you can delay troops for those, you know, a couple crucial hours, it has the same effect either way.

Thus, the officers of the loyalist forces may have received orders stating, move into the city center, hold the parliament building and the radio station. The leadership may have added that they would be acting against the forces of a coup, but even so, such orders would have insurrectional undertones. When army officers find themselves doing unusual things, their natural reaction is to try and fit them into familiar patterns. The most familiar pattern of all will be to arrive at the conclusion that the politician are guilty of yet another mess.

The most probable course of action will be to request clarification from their superior officers. It is to be hoped that these officers will have decided to remain neutral or else have been arrested. In either case, the clarification will never arrive. If, on the other hand, the loyalist units decide to force the roadblock, we will benefit from the tactical advantages of the defensive. These include the opportunity of choosing the place. natural obstructions such as bridges and tunnels, and the opportunity of deploying and camouflaging weapons and men. In order to make the fullest use of both the psychological and the tactical advantages, the blocking position should have a dual structure, a largely symbolic, first line

composed of some suitable physical obstacle, such as cross-parked heavy vehicles, with a few men bearing orders to forbid all passage. Beyond this, there will be a second military line, much stronger numerically, with weapons and men deployed to repel an eventual assault. The operational detail involved is discussed in Appendix B. The idea is not to ambush the Loyalist to inflict maximum damage. On the contrary, the defenders of the blocking position should inform the incoming loyalist forces that there is such a second line of defense in order to deter them. Because the strength of a camouflaged force is hard to assess, it can serve as a deterrent,

even if it is numerically weak as compared to the opposition. It's got to be restressed so many times that the goal was not to fight people from your own country. The goal is to get their compliance for those few hours without hurting anybody. The situation at each blocking station will require delicate handling, and it will be necessary that the soldiers on our side understand that their primary function is to avoid combat rather than to engage in it successfully. In concrete terms, their mission will be a delaying of, operation rather than a decisive one. And this will have precise implications in terms of the

weapons and tactics to be employed. Is that, so it seems like if you would have, if there would be infliction of violence upon fellow citizens, if you're, if you're teaming up, if you're conspiring with the forces that may be outside outside the country, like even, like, say a PMC, that they would probably be ones that you would have to worry about inflicting violence upon your fellow people. You'd have to have a talk with them first, right? Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's part of the issue we talked about in the planning stages. It's, you're engaged in a legal action. So it's really hard to prepare and to do the necessary training beforehand

like you would for any other military operation. But we want to attempt to do that to the degree we could. So yeah, outside forces, yeah. And again, outside forces carry the obvious risk that everybody around to include random civilians knows, hey, that's not our country there. So it looks like an invasion. So it has, you know, lots of issues. If you do, you get to use them.

which is why like when the Soviets deposed the communist regime in Afghanistan before invading, they had Spesnoss troops, mostly, most of whom were ethnic, Central Asians, you know, Tajiks and Uzbeks and whatnot, wearing the local uniform so that they didn't look like a foreign country. Hypothetically, something like that, generally the kind of troops that you would send in that situation are probably going to be better trained, better disciplined. But again, the coordination is always an issue. If you don't coordinate, that's how you get fractured in the battlefield. That's how you get fractured side in something like this. Okay.

New heading. Timing, sequence, and security. Ideally, the timing of the coup will be completely flexible so that we can take advantage of any favorable circumstances that may arise, the temporary absence of the leadership from the capital city, for instance, or the outbreak of some coincidental civil disorders. This flexibility, which would be highly desirable, is only rarely possible, however, because the infiltration of the army and police will be a dynamically unstable process. The circle of those who have decided to join us will grow and continue growing as a bandwagon

effect is generated, but unless the coup materializes, there will eventually be a movement into neutrality or even opposition. Notice that Biden decided to, quote, he decided, quote, to cancel his presidential campaign, What was it during a weekend when most of his primary staff was out and then, you know, loyalists in the DNC were around in order to make the decision for him? So it wasn't necessarily a real coup in the proper sense. But man, it looks an awful lot like the one. Meanwhile, the danger of denunciation will also increase as more and more people become aware that a coup is being planned or at any rate that something is up. The timing of the coup will therefore be dictated by the,

progress of our infiltration of the armed forces and police. As soon as a satisfactory degree of penetration is achieved, the coup must be executed. This implies that it will not be possible to designate a date while in advance of the coup that can be communicated to the various teams. This is just as well because it means that the date cannot be leaked to the security agencies. Actually, it is quite likely that some information about us will have reached to security agencies, but this should not affect the outcome. As the preparations for the queue proceed, more and more truthful information about our actions will be in circulation, but it will be increasingly obscured by noise. Another operational sequence and timing flow chart that there's

no way I could possibly describe. It looks like a business process flow chart. Every move we make will generate information that could equally reached a security agencies, eventually reach to security agencies, but the consequences and misinterpretations of our actions will generate an equal or greater amount of noise. This will make it increasingly difficult for the analysts of the security agencies to identify the nature of the threat because their capacity for processing information is not unlimited. This process is illustrated in figure 5, 2, in which O to Z is the normal level of noise, at all times, O to A, or is that zero at A?

Is the processing capability? What do you think? I don't know. Yeah. Received it all times. I'm going to say zero. Zero to A is the processing capacity of the analysts at the security agencies, and X is the point beyond which the total flow of data exceeds processing capacity

so that each item of real data is accorded a diminishing amount of attention. And then we have a graph that people can, they buy the book, they can, and they listen along, check it out for themselves. Yeah, bottom line is anytime you communicate at any level, from the perspective, the enemy, the guys listen again, intercepting intelligence, you know, the question is you have hard information, And then you have the noise that's surrounding it, you know, which may or may not be true, which is, you know, rumors and everything else. It's like the best example of that would be like pre-9-11 when, you know, multiple agencies, the FBI and CIA knew about the guys training at training to become airline pilots who didn't want to land, which is important to add a point. Unfortunately, it's drowned out with every other, you know, possible threat.

you know, a lot of them domestic, or at least allegedly domestic threats that they're more focused on. So that's always the issue, right? Is intelligence has a limited ability to predict what's happening based upon what they've intercepted because they're just going through so much shit. Even if the security agencies could isolate the real data from the noise, they will not usually take immediate action. Their professional instinct will be to try to uncover all the ramifications of the plot so as to be able to arrest all its participants. and it may be hoped that the coup will be executed while the security agencies are still engaged in their investigations. But their people will be aware of this timing problem and therefore are quite likely to respond to a possible threat by going ahead to arrest those of the planners of the coup that they have identified.

This nervousness presents a special problem on the eve of the coup. Our final preparations will probably generate a sharp increase in the total flow of signals received by the security agencies. Even without separating them from noise, the mere increase in the total flow of information could be interpreted as a danger signal, as it certainly would be by competent analysts. And this might trigger the arrests. In practice, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say that's always the issue. It's one of those things in hindsight. It's always 2020 that you had a huge spike in noise before a major event.

I know people doing open source intelligence analysis. All of them said that they had so much increased activity, like, right before the October attacks in Israel. But knowing that something was going to happen is not the same thing as knowing what was going to happen when and where. So that's always the game of cat and mouse between the two sides. In practice, it will rarely be possible to achieve total security within all the forces of the coup. And we should assume as a working hypothesis that they have, in fact, been infiltrated by the security. agency. This leads to the general defensive procedures discussed in chapter three, but it will also have precise operational implications. A, each team will be told well in advance what equipment and

tactics will be required to seize this particular target, but not the exact designation of the target. B, each team will only be told as designated target when it actually receives the signal to proceed to its seizure. C, each team will be alerted individually, which only will be with only as much advanced warning as it requires to prepare for its particular task, instead of a general go signal for all teams. Because the teams will have different starting points and different targets to go to, the use of any one general signal would either give insufficient warning to some teams or an unnecessarily long one to others.

The longer the time between the announcement that the coup is on and its actual execution, the greater likelihood that information will reach to security agencies in time to prevent the successful execution of the coup, because this will be the moment at which their operatives in our ranks could send out warnings. The most important takeaway from this is operational security is important to everything. And the biggest reason why you limit knowledge on a battlefield based a need to know is nobody can torture you for information. don't have. That makes sense. The problem of warning time and lead time is illustrated in figure 5.53. If we give all our teams a 10-hour warning period by sending out a general call at hour 10, then team number one will just about reach this target in time, but all the other teams will

have received excess warning. In other words, information will have been distributed before it was essential to do so. If we give all the teams a two-hour warning period, then excess warning will be zero, but team number five will reach it to target several hours before team number one, and those defending it will probably be on a full alert. The solution appears to be a simple one. Make warning time equal to lead time so that each team is alerted just in time to allow it to reach its target by the zero hour. This is probably the most important, most important specific requirement in a hypothetical coup. In reality, the problem is more complex.

It is not a matter of simultaneous arrival at the target, but rather the simultaneous penetration of the early warning system maintained by the security agencies of the state. If, for example, team number two has to cross the entire capital city to reach its target, the security agency will probably be alerted as soon as it enters a city at, say, hour two. Thus, by the time team number four reached its target, the opposition would have had two hours to prepare for its defense. We may have had very little information on the functioning of the security apparatus, but we can operate on the assumption that a team, if it is large and or equivalent armor, will be noticed and reported as soon as it enters the capital city. We must therefore ensure A, the protection of our security position against an internal threat, which is achieved by minimizing excess warning time.

And B, the protection of our security position against external observation, which is achieved by simultaneous penetration of the capital city area. Both aims will be achieved by sending the teams into action at a time corresponding to their lead times to the capital city boundary or other applicable perimeter. This is illustrated in figure 5'4. This whole issue with lead times does become one of the most challenging thing. Because as he said hypothetically, or he said specifically, you don't want to have a headquarters. unfortunately adapting and then issuing orders based upon the appropriate lead time is exactly the kind of thing that you need a headquarters to do.

So it becomes sort of a command and controlled challenge that I don't think he really solved, but I think he explains, you know, absolutely perfectly. New heading, into action. The actual execution of the coup will require many different qualities. skillful off-the-cuff-cuff diplomacy at a blocking station confronted by loyalist forces, instant personnel management at radio and television stations to persuade their technical staff to cooperate with us, and considerable tactical abilities in the case of targets that are heavily defended. Our resources will probably be too limited to form fully specialized teams out of the pool of those units and individuals that we have incorporated, but we should nevertheless match broad categories of targets with appropriate teams.

We can distinguish between three such categories of targets and their corresponding teams. New heading, A targets. These are the more heavily protected facilities with armed guards and strict access pass control, such as the Royal or Presidential Palace, the Central Police Station, and the Army HQ. In times of crisis, of course, such facilities may be provided with full-fledged military defense and in many countries, the crisis is permanent. Partly in order to minimize bloodshed, which could have a destabilizing effect on the situation,

and partly in order to reduce the total manpower required, these targets will have to be seized by sophisticated teams using various blends of infiltration, diversion, and assault. Yeah, so obviously something like the Pentagon is not really feasible, right? You would probably need at least a battalion to take it. And the fact that we have such a weird patchwork system for law enforcement makes it even harder. For the sake of comparison, Iraq during the occupation, the MOD building and the MOI building, MOD's mystery defense. It's the regular military, MOI's police and John Dar-Marie and whatnot.

Each of those probably had at least a company worth of troops there. But on top of that, all the military and police personnel and both those buildings carry their sidearm. So again, it worked both ways where it basically was in. possible to storm the building without major bloodshed since literally every person there was armed with a weapon that they could steer it theoretically use at the same time every so often you know there would be a disturbance and something loud that sounded like a gunshot would go off and people would start shooting each other in the halls of the iraqi pentagon or iraqi national police headquarters which this isn't so much relevant to this discussion is an explanation of what this looks like in real life

usually be necessary to prepare for a fairly extensive military operation and a complex one as well, unless we have great numerical superiority in the area of the target. This should not result in much actual combat. When those who guard the target in question are confronted by our extensive preparations, they are unlikely to put up much for serious resistance. The fact that our general measures of neutralization have cut off or impeded their contacts with the leadership, the fact that the clear patriotic issues of international warfare will be missing in an internal conflict, and the fact that we will make every effort to allow them to give in gracefully by simply leaving or giving up their weapons, we will all militate against a prolonged defense. That's part of why a lot of these

fairly soft targets you want to arrive, the overwhelming force. It's not to defeat everybody. Well, it is to defeat it, but not to do it by fighting. The goal is to make it so that they understand that there is no benefit to fighting so that they comply or surrender quickly. If we are fortunate enough to have incorporated a very large number of troops, and especially if they are equipped with impressive weapons such as armored vehicles, it will be still less likely that the actual combat will take place. These targets will nevertheless indirectly present us with a very serious problem, though it is political rather than military.

The formation of the large teams required by these targets will raise a delicate issue of the coup within the coup danger. During the active phase of the coup, the situation will be confused and extremely unstable. While the other teams will be too small to tempt their leader into trying to usurp our control, the operational leaders that the A teams may well succumb to temptation. The man who leads to tanks that have just seized a presidential palace may easily persuade himself that he can also seize power on his own behalf, and if the A team is sufficiently powerful, he may do just that. Our satisfaction at having carried out a coup successfully

would be an insufficient reward for all our efforts unless we also retain power afterwards. It will be necessary, then, to adopt measures to prevent the leaders of these large teams from challenging our position. This can sometimes be done by forming the A teams from many small subunits under the overall command of an inner member of our own group.

Okay. Where this is the gun. No, I was just going to say that's the biggest challenge here is you can perform the coup successfully and who and having somebody who you didn't intend to take over, take over. And very often that is the issue, like in Latin America, when you have a junta, theoretically, this council of officers in charge. But councils don't really rule very well, especially councils of military leaders.

So somebody's going to be in charge, even if they delegate all their authority and who's that going to be. And as far as I can tell from the histories of coups and process, a lot of times it seems to be a roll of the dice that we're going to figure out after things happen. Where this is not possible, the A-teams will have to be dispersed into smaller groups assigned to secondary targets as soon as they have fulfilled their primary mission. Thus, the possible threat presented by the A-teams will be deflected by applying the energies of their leaders to other tasks. The operational commanders of the A-teams will probably need a certain amount of time to readjust to the fact that they are no longer isolated individuals engaged on a dangerous endeavor and to start thinking in more ambitious terms.

Matters should be arranged so that they are deprived of their large and unified teams before the transition is made in their minds. And again, this gets back to the issue that he talks about. We're going to simplify the planning to what is absolutely necessary outside the core inner circle. and nobody's going to know about the whole plan or the plan as a whole. And once you actually do the initial coup is when it suddenly becomes apparent. And as he said, everybody's going to become ambitious in that way, in that look time. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because ambitious people doing things on behalf of a collective is, you know,

how every polity in the history of the world has functioned. But the issue becomes at that point, how do you integrate them in the, on behalf of what you as the coup plot or see, as proper since, again, you've deposed whatever the established legal authority was. So doing that a second time becomes much easier. B targets. These are the technical facilities that will not usually be heavily guarded, and which in any case we want to neutralize rather than seize, among them any central telecommunications facility and radio television stations.

Each of those targets will be assigned to a small team whose personnel will include a technician whose presence should help to minimize the amount of physical damage resulting from sabotage. It is possible to interdict these targets by minor and external sabotage. The B-team may consist of just one or two technically competent operators. Even if the actual building has to be entered for a short time, the B-team will still be a small one. In this case, however, it should be overt and consist of uniformed soldiers or police. The most important thing he says here, technical facilities, it's things like radio, telecommunications.

It could be things like power stations and whatnot. The most important thing is you want control of that, but you don't want to blow it up because you've got to fix the thing afterwards. And as you said, the goal is to minimize the size of the team. So we know we need the technicians in order to take control of it and make sure things aren't being damaged. And, you know, as much security as they need in order to make that happen and not much more. because the bigger you have, the easier it is to intercept it. C targets. These are the individuals we wish to hold in isolation for the duration of the coup.

In the case of the main leader leaders of the government, the arrest will be subsumed in the seizure of the presidential palace and similar A targets. The other C targets should not present a penetration problem, but they will present an evasion problem. A radio station or a royal palace can be very very, difficult targets to seize, but at least they cannot escape or conceal their identity. The personalities whom we wish to arrest will try to do both. It will therefore be essential to devote our early attentions to these targets to ensure that they are seized before they can evade

our teams. This will usually imply that the C teams will go into operation marginally earlier than the other teams, and they can do so without breaking the rules of simultaneous penetration of the early warning system because they should be sufficiently small and dispersed to act covertly. And again, and he'll repeat this. The goal is to take those people, whoever, you know, potential key leaders outside of just the presidential or royal administration out of action. The goal is not to hurt them, at least not at this stage. The goal is not to kill them.

The goal is to take them out of action where they can't communicate with their organizations. They can't work against us. And in a very effective coup, a lot of times you take them into something that looks a lot like protective custody, with them and their families are taken care of, or suddenly it becomes really advantageous to cooperate with the people who have you as a prisoner. Because of those targets are human, they will be inherently more problematic than some of our other objectives. The individual's concerned, apart from escaping or concealing their identity, could also try to subvert the very team sent to arrest them. In the case of particularly

charismatic figures, our teams will have to be formed from especially selected personnel, In some cases, they may even be necessary to include an inner member of our group. These C-teams will be small, since their task will be a matter of entering a private residence and overpowering one or two guards. The exact size of each team will depend on the overall balance of resources and requirements under which we operate, but will rarely exceed a dozen men or so. So a good example of when this wasn't done properly is like we talked about, the preface to the revised version. version of There Will Be War by Jerry Pornel. He talks about that tank battalion that goes to take Yeltsin into captivity where the commander goes in, talks to him an hour later, comes out and he's on his side and he turns the tank around.

So as he said, you know, a charismatic person who has some kind of moral and legal authority can be the guy who undoes a coup just by convincing the soldiers who come to arrest him, not to arrest him. Once the individuals that form this group of targets have been arrested, we will have to ensure that they are kept under a secure form of control. Our purpose in arresting them is to prevent them from using their command authority and or personal charisma against us, and this can only be achieved if we can insulate them from the public for the whole duration of the coup. Such individuals are often the only casualties of otherwise bloodless coups, because it is often easier to eliminate them rather than to keep them as captives. If we do keep

them, the ad hoc prison used must be both secret and internally secure. The liberation of a popular public figure could be a powerful focus of the counter-coup actions on the part of the opposition. So secrecy will be a more reliable defense than any physical barrier. While the teams that are on their way to the respective targets, our other allies, while the teams are on their way to their prospective targets, our other allies will also come into action. The individuals we have subverted in various parts of the armed forces and bureaucracy will carry out their limited missions. of technical neutralization. And the groups assigned to the blocking positions

will be moving to take up their planned locations designed to isolate the loyalist forces. In the case of those dispersed individuals whose contribution will be extremely important, though almost totally invisible, there will be a signaling problem, since they are scattered throughout the sensitive parts of the state apparatus.

It will be difficult to reach them individually. Furthermore, they may include informants of the security agencies, because, unlike the personnel of the various teams and blocking forces, they have been recruited as isolated individuals. Hence, the mutual surveillance exercise on our behalf in the teams will not operate. It would be dangerous to give them advance warning of the coup, and their signals to go into action will have to be our first broadcast on the radio television station, except in particular cases where the facility to be neutralized requires early attention. Our operational control over the various groups cooperating with us will aim at achieving two objectives,

A, as always, maximum speed in the execution of the tasks, and B, the use of the absolute minimum of force. This will be important not only because of the psychological and political factor, as mentioned previous, but also for a more direct technical reason, the external uniformity between the two sides of the conflict. Our teams will of course be nationals of the country in which the coup is being staged, and most of them will be soldiers and police officers wearing the same uniforms as those of the opposition. The uniformity will give us a measure of protection, since the loyalist forces will not readily know who is loyal and who is not. Usually it would be a mistake to prejudice a protective cover by adopting distinctive armbands or other conventional labels, since we will need all the protection we can get.

Thus, as the teams move around the capital city, probably at night, they will probably not be fired upon unless they open fire first. To do so, however, would be to facilitate the work of the opposition since this will be their only way of distinguishing between their own forces and ourselves. And since our teams have always been kept separate, initially to prevent the penetration of the security agencies and now to protect our own position within the forces of the coup, there will be a danger of conflict between our team. The confusion we generate in the minds of the opposition could, therefore, exact a price and confusion with our own ranks. This may... No, I'd say fractur side's always the issue. Even in conventional war with the best trained troops, you know, mistaking one thing for another thing and shooting your own guys is a problem in a case where everybody's wearing the same uniforms, that's even more of a problem. And the fact that we're in a situation where firing our weapons, our goal is generally bad. We want to accomplish things without actually having to fire our weapons. So these are all concerns.

Okay. This may have serious consequences unless our forces respect the rule of a minimal and purely defensive use of force. I'm going to end it right there for today. I have a hard out. Anything you want to wrap up on this? No. Like you said, the goal is to avoid fighting. You have weapons basically to force compliance.

And hopefully that works without having to shoot people. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. And I hope you'll come back and finish this with me because you got me into this. So you're going to get me out of this. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry.

All right, John. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.