The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Coup D'état' by Edward N. Luttwak - Part 3 w/ Lafayette Lee

Episode Date: August 10, 2024

59 MinutesPG-13Pete continues his reading of Edward N. Luttwak's "Coup D'état." In this episode he welcomes Lafayette Lee to comment on the conclusion of chapter 2.Lafayette at IM-1176Antelope 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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And now I've introduced Gumroad because I know that a lot of our guys are on Gumroad and they are against censorship. So if you head over to Gumroad and you subscribe through there, you'll get the episodes early and ad free and you'll get an invite into the telegram group. So I really appreciate all the support everyone's giving me and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to part three. of my reading of Edward Lutfax, Kudait-A-T-Lafat-Lie is here with me. How are you doing, Lafayette? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on, Pete.

Yeah, I mean, the reason I asked you to come on and do this reading with me is because I know that you interviewed Lut-Faq in the last couple of years. So what I've asked everybody so far is, when did you first learn about this book? How did it come on your radar? and just general little introduction of why you think it's important. Sure. I've had the privilege of reading a lot of Lutwok's work since before I kind of came onto the online scene. So when I was in the military, I was in a certain capacity in the military in which this type of book would have a lot more currency.

So somebody recommended it to me. It was like an officer. I was just an enlisted guy. And so I went and hunted down the book. I got a 1969 copy of a of the book and took it with me on a deployment and I was actually down in an area that suffered from coups and so I thought it would be relevant and it just blew me away and from that point on starting with this book it always kind of put Lutwak on my radar I was just going to say too with the sorry

I should have said this but the interview with Lutwak was also really interesting it was kind of a privilege I interviewed him for I'm 1776 and just we had a very lengthy conversation I couldn't put it all into the interview, but I was very impressed. I don't agree with everything that Lutuat kind of puts out there, but he's one of those like Beltway rebels that I've always had a great deal of admiration for just the way his mind works and how he solves problems. So, yeah, it was a good experience. All right.

So, yeah, let's do this. I'm going to start with the section in chapter two on organic unity. Stop me anytime. Organic unity. In looking at the political consequences, of economic backwardness, we saw that the crucial factor was the concentration of all power in the hands of small elite. Conversely, in sophisticated political settings, power is diffuse and therefore difficult to seize in a coup. We now face another possible obstacle to a coup.

Power may be in the hands of sectional political forces, which use the government as a front, or of regional forces whose dependence on the supposed political center is only theoretical. In both these cases, the problem lies in the fact that the seizure of the supposed political center will not win the battle. The sources of political power may be in other centers that may be too difficult or too numerous to seize. And so the realities of power are in conflict with the theoretical structure of the state, just as in those cases where the political unit is not truly independent. Here, power exists within the country, but it is not where it's supposed to be because the political entity is not really organic. Yeah, I was-sectional interests. Okay.

Yeah, I wanted to kind of stop there just for a second. I think this is really important, especially for people that are exploring some of these ideas for the first time, is that there is a real bifurcation of the theoretical and then the actual real political centers of power. And we can see that in our own country. I think these things were largely invisible to us probably 40 years ago. You know, America as a concept seemed very, you know, was very different then, right, to us. And as things had started to fracture and decay, we're able to see where these two things diverge, that the schoolhouse rock theoretical centers of power that we believed and grew up with

are not necessarily the real centers of power. And so when we even talk, I mean, a word like coup might be a little bit, might be like a little strong for what some of the things we're working towards. For others, maybe not. But when we talk about being able to fight back to seize power in some way, often we see a lot of people guided by ideology, which tends to cling to the theoretical a lot more than the real.

And that can be a major problem in a sophisticated political regime like this one or other countries in the West. The managerial regime does a really good job of doing that, right? Convincing the masses that it's actually very simplistic. We have this ideology and we're operating inside this box. And, you know, if we go outside the box, we have to, it's only for an emergency. And, yeah, I think that's very very, that's very. very clearly a tool that they use. And that's something I've been talked, I talk a lot about ever since I, you know, stop being a libertarian, is that libertarianism is a perfect example.

Conservatism is an example of this ideology that is sold to you by a regime that is neither. maybe we'll use certain pieces of both to trick you into thinking that this is what it is. But in essence, basically what you are is you're in a managerial system where the power is spread out and finding the head of the snake is almost impossible. Yeah, that's exactly right. And kind of even just going further with that a little bit is that, you know, from like a libertarian perspective and I spent time, I was always like probably a conservative, but I was very friendly to libertarian ideas. But it was like the idea of where does power lie? There's kind of for

Americans, it's like there's a public private separation that we see theoretically. But then you can look at recent events and then dispel yourself of that idea. When you see that America has, I guess we've had 11 intelligence agencies colluding with social media companies. So now we see, you know, have a private public, right? And when you dive into those details and you see the work of NGOs, of nonprofits, alongside formalized tech companies and then intelligence agencies, it's really difficult to distinguish where the public ends and the private begins. And I think that this is a very important distinction as we go through and start analyzing like how is power diffused and then how is power seized or exercised? So yeah, completely.

agree with that. Onward. Sectional interests. This is the age of giant globalized business enterprises. The same factors that led to the unprecedented prosperity of modern industrial, post-industrial remains a mere designers pose. Economies have always systematically favored larger business organizations over their smaller competitors. Mass production and mass distribution are not diminished by the study by the steady advance of online customization, and both imply large business units. Where the advantages of large-scale production are particularly great, as in the automobile, chemical and energy industries,

only the very largest enterprise can survive. Elsewhere, even if there is no such economic imperative, the giant corporation has developed because of the economies of large-scale marketing or simply because of the natural dynamics of accumulation. The same is definitely true of the newer breed of information, technology, and online service enterprises. In every industrial developed economy, there are such giant firms that have been able to grow sufficiently to emerge from the rest of their industry to become one of its focal points.

This position gives them a great deal of power because their managerial decisions can affect the entire national economy, especially, of course, when they are monopolies or near enough. There are many more monopolies in smaller economies. Indeed, some consist of monopolies to a large extent, with the resulting high cost inflicted on hapless consumers. But even in the world's largest economy, the passenger airliner industry is monopolized by Boeing, with predictable results. Unshakeable complacency, mostly, even after disastrous managerial errors. I'm sure this is him. part of his update in 2016 and was any impression about this. Absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting that this kind of dovetails in with what we were discussing before is that we, the inclination, right, the what has been sold to us with the idea of globalization is that it will introduce greater competition, which, you know, the byproduct of which would be theoretically, more innovation, more diversity among, in the economy that exists, more opportunities,

so on and so forth, right? We've heard these arguments made for decades. But you see that this, that it's completely opposite. You know, the idea that globalization will actually prevent monopolies. It's the, in practice, it's absolutely the opposite of that. And I think a really important thing that he brings up here is that these major decisions made by giants among giants will affect the entire national economy. And so if you still believe in things like representative, government that they exist or they function or any kind of democratic pressure from, you know, your single individual constituents. Ask yourself what kind of political system or lawmakers, policymakers, government officials would allow these companies to be treated exactly the same as other

players within your economy if decisions that they make can shape the entire national economy. And realistically, the logical conclusion is, no, you cannot be treated the same. And so this is yet another example of how we, a lot of people are starting to change how they look at these things, diverging between the rhetoric and the theory with what it is in practice. It's interesting, I agree with you, how Lutwak was able to see this at a time when these kinds of conversations, I mean, he published this in like the late 60s during a time of incredible. incredible growth, the United States had a huge global footprint and decisions that were being made that would shape the country for decades to come.

That he was able to see that it isn't quite what it seems and that in practice the influence of these firms will have over not just the economy of a country but the political... Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad. Brenda wants a television and she's prepared to fight for it. If you ask me, it's the fastest way to a meltdown. Me, I just prepare the fastest way to get stuff, and it doesn't get faster than Appliances Delivered.e.

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System. We're just enormous. Reading on. Why should Boeing bother, given that it has no competition aside from Airbus, the heavily bureaucratized multinational consortium on the other side of the pond? Together, the two form the most comfortably lethargic of duopolys, hence the sad lack of innovation as the same basic pre-1950 tubular design remains in use in the 21st century instead of more. efficient aerodynamic forms. However damaging it is economically, and the United States suffers

greatly from Boeing's domination of an entire industry, monopolies are all the more powerful because of their very defect. In the context of the Kudat-Tas ha, however, the power of giant corporations is just one more element within the business community as a whole, and this, in turn, is just one of the forces competing in the political life of the nation. The corporation may be a giant, but in advanced economies, it is a giant among many. The opposite is true in economically less developed countries. If the availability of mineral and hydrocarbon deposits leads to the development of industry, then, because of the nature of those sectors, there will be one large firm rather than many

small ones. There is, by definition, little or no other industry. The tax revenues will be small, except for the company's taxes, and there will be very few jobs except for the company's jobs. If there are roads and railways, they will have been built by the company as company transport facilities. Most of the schools and hospitals will be company welfare services. Company housing may dwarf nearby towns, and company security guards may be better equipped than the national police. When the state is poor and fragile, the rich and well-organized mining company will be the great power in the land.

it seeks or eschews this power. In fact, it will almost always be forced to intervene in politics, if only to preserve the status quo. When the company does act, it has a wide range of different weapons it can use, and it can use them at many different levels. The company can slow the flow of tax income to the state by transferring production to some other country in which it operates. It can boost a particular politician by giving real or sinecure jobs to his supporters, It can buy or bribe the press and generally exercise the power it derives from being very rich among the very poor. One thing I want to bring up to for listeners who are trying to wrap their heads around this, it's really hard to leave maybe the American context,

is you can look back in American history. There was a really great, actually an episode, I think, of the Martyr-made podcast when he explores how this same process played out in Appalachian. with the mining towns and the company towns, the influence that the company had in their local area, that you have kind of a group of people who had maybe their ancestors had settled that land. They literally lived off the land in Appalachia. And through the mining coming in,

introduced a completely different way of life, essentially either employed those people under very difficult conditions or it forced them out. And through that, there was a lot of political turmoil that invited the wrath of the state and the national government. And so if it's difficult to kind of understand how this works by trying to escape like an American context because we're in a much more, I guess, advanced stage, you could say. This played out here in America many times over. And the most obvious example would be what happened with coal mining specifically in Appalachia, that we see. saw this same thing happen and the way that Lutwok talks about the influence and relationship between

the company and the importance of being able to introduce infrastructure, take care of all the most basic needs of employees to keep the line moving, and then also be able to control the political apparatus as well. This isn't just something that happens in Latin America, African countries. This happened here in the United States. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes.

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Talk to a friendly professional at Frankine Volkswagen today and see if upgrading your car is the right prescription for you. Nor is it an improvement to replace wicked foreign exploitation with domestic exploiters, whether local tycoons who will invariably get away with more tax cheating, or the officials placed in control of nationalized enterprises. State-owned then becomes employee-owned, with the executives in charge taking everything for themselves and favored employees, including investment essential to keep the business going, or with the union bosses in charge doing the same thing.

Worst of all, they may simply and openly distribute all profits to all employees, including themselves, again, leaving little or nothing for investment. This has been the fate of the potentially very great Mexican Pemex, Venezuelan PDVSA, and to some degree Brazilian petrobras, state-owned oil companies. What an industrial empire can do, set in a backward environment was illustrated by the Katanga secession in the early 1960s. All right, there's some names here.

There's a name here that I'm going to, I'm going to just stumble over, so please forgive me. When the Congolese political leader, Moise Kepende Shombay, 1919 to 1969, launched his independent Katanga Republic, he had only the meager resources of a provincial governor of the Congolese Republic. Yet, as the secession proceeded, Shumbe acquired a veritable army with some combat jets, artillery, armored cars, and even well-organized propaganda bureaus in London and New York. Perhaps most important, he was able to recruit and pay handsomely competent mercenary soldiers, any number of whom could seemingly drive off any number of regular Congolese soldiers.

Shombay's Katanga had only one major source of wealth, the mining industry owned by the Union Minier, part of the interrelated mining groups operating at the time in the Copper Belt and South Africa. It was evident all along that Shumbe was financed by the Union Minier and acted largely as an agent for the company. But even the Union... Were you going to say something? I was just going to say real quick, if anybody wants a good recommendation on a book, if you're starting to learn about Katanga for the first time, there's a really interesting book called Katanga, the Untold Story of U and Betrayal. It's kind of a difficult book to find, but it discusses how Katanga came to be and then how it was basically forced under the control of a communist state, which was central Congo by the United Nations. And so it kind of adds like a little bit of context to what we're talking about that might be pretty poignant for the subject of coup d'etat. But sorry, I didn't mean to stop you.

No words. But even the Union Migny was operating in what was a relatively unfavorable environment. The Congo is a very large country, 11th in the world, and there were other mineral deposits worked by other companies with different interests to protect. The typical large-scale enterprises operate in countries where it is the only major industry. Thus, Aramco, the oil company owned by Saudi Arabia's ruling family, is still by far the largest industrial organization in the country. Its company towns built to house employees dwarf other towns in the area in importance and facilities, and its earnings constitute a very large part of all government revenue. The Saudi regime has always been efficient at retaining political control over what was, until recently, a loose coalition of tribes.

The old desert warrior and founder of the kingdom, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, was a past master of controlling the tribes, and until it was nationalized and became family-owned, he treated Aramco as just another tribe, albeit a particularly powerful one. A standard nationalist accusation against the large-scale foreign enterprise is that it functions as a state within the state and that it exercises political power either through its direct influence over the country's government or by using the leverage of its home country on the host country. For decades, the banana-growing United Fruit Company was accused of exercising power in Central America through corrupt local cliques, while the oil companies in the Middle East were accused of using both tactics. A much less plausible accusation against foreign companies was that they engaged in covert activities against the state, sabotage, and espionage among them. Just why they should undertake such activities was not explained, but the accusations were widely believed. When Brigadier General Husni al-Zahim seized power in Syria in 1949 by Kudaita, One of its first actions was to limit the freedom of action of the Iraq Petroleum Company, whose pipeline crossed Syria.

IPC was informed that A, its aircraft would have to obtain official permits for each flight, B, the company's security guards would be replaced by public security forces, and C, company personnel would need official permits to travel in border zones. however unfounded the accused allegations of complicity and espionage, which were the supposed reason for the new rules, it should be noted that such restrictions, except for the last one, are commonplace in developed countries. Yeah, this is a really important thing to take note of, because typically in coup d'etat, like a coup d'et in a developing country, typically where, you know, what Lutok would describe a where the system of government is very fragile this one of those you'll see it's a very

commonplace accusation made usually by the leaders of a coup d'etat that the that the foreign influences or the companies or whatever it is that there is some kind of covert activity usually they use this often as leverage specifically with the local population or to justify by actions that go beyond what their explicit powers are. And so you'll see this over and over again. If you visit Latin American countries, especially the older generation, go to Brazil. If you go to Brazil and you're an American,

there are some areas where people will come up and ask you if you are part of the CIA. There's a deep memory of these things. Some of it is real, but there is a lot of it that when seizing power or when there was dramatic regime change, that often, you know, espion, and covert operations are cited as the reason for doing so, and it can be very difficult to distinguish what is real and what is not. Okay, moving on. Even if the foreign company has no

desire to interfere in the political life of the host country, it may be forced to do so merely in order to protect its installations and personnel. Typically, this is the case when the company is operating in areas that are not under the effective control of the DeGere government, especially remote areas inhabited by minority groups were controlled by local insurgents, which may be one in the same. Thus, the French rubber plantations that persisted in South Vietnam, even in war, were accused of financing the Viet Cong.

But there was no reason to impute sinister motives because the official government, which also collects taxes, was unable to guarantee their safety. The French plantations were simply paying their taxes to de facto government. This remains a common practice, in conflict areas. Much of the money that the United States and other governments spend on road building in Afghanistan was, of course, simply stolen. Some legally, as the U.S. Agency for International Development USAID awarded contracts to very expensive general contractors who applied a hefty override

before hiring subcontractors who, in turn, did the same before hiring sub-contractors. of the part that did reach the mostly Turkish contractors who actually build roads, a significant proportion once the Taliban insurgents, as well as local banditos, with both not interfering playing a dual role as paid security guards. In this way, a kilometer of the simplest asphalt road in Afghanistan ended up costing as much as a kilometer of high-speed four-lane highway in Europe. much more economically, much more economically usually, oil companies have routinely paid off those who introduce themselves properly by, say, perforating a pipeline or blowing it up in just one short segment to make their needs perfectly clear. It matters not if they plan, if they are plain banditos or grace themselves with a revolutionary or religious appellation, now that sundry murderers,

call themselves the party of God, Hezbollah. There is an understandable nostalgia for the days of the popular fronts for the liberation of this or that, which competed with the popular and democratic funds for the liberation of, and their splinter groups, which naturally call themselves the united front for the liberation of. I wanted to just throw in one more thing here. I think the reader should return always to the United States and try to see where there are similar. I know we're dealing with a very complex political system and country versus maybe more fragile one. But something to think about is what we have seen in this country, you might not see active banditos or, you know, Maoist like terrorists or whatever, quite the same. But you know, we did see a massive sea change in

corporate sentiment towards BLM and the 2020 riots. And I think this kind of returns us to that question about what is theoretical, what is practical, where, and obviously, they're going to intersect, right? There are definitely true believers within corporate America, within government. But there's also the idea of looking at how in a complex system, how terrorizing or bullying these corporations around or threatening their resources and their reach, how that can influence them. And so I think that that's an important thing to look at here in the United States and ask yourself, how many of these, do we see parallels between the massive sea change in sentiment and corporate support for groups like BLM that at the time were burning down, you know,

cities and then they, you know, 25 deaths and billions of dollars of damage. Many ordinary Americans were asking themselves how this could happen. How could these big corporations, it's ostensibly believe in capitalism, why they would move so quickly to support BLM? But I think that some parallels here are are definitely real and don't just extend to fragile states dealing with terrorist problems or militia groups. Well, I think a lot of that also has to do with the sympathies of the bondholders on most companies, the convertible. Yeah, I definitely agree with you.

I also think there's kind of a, there's always, you know, the forecasting of strategic is like, where is the country and its sentiments moving? And I definitely believe that there are people out there who definitely, who believe, who believe in this stuff, who, you know, however crazy it is. And I think there's also probably like a subtle understanding that this does, these kinds of actions control the population.

It keeps the population from being able to exercise their own influence as voters, as citizens. And if you constantly have the citizens of a country dealing with this type of problem that's really unsolvable, you can continue to do what you want to do. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end.

Here goes. This winter sports extra is jampacked with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. That's the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampack with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby.

Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. Don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back. At foot Solutions, we specialize in high-quality supportive footwear. And use the latest scanning technology to custom-maker orthotics, designed for your unique feet.

If you want to free your feet and joints from pain, improve balance or correct alignment, book a free foot assessment at footsolutions.i or pop-in store today. Foot Solutions The first step towards pain-free feet Have you recently purchased a new vehicle from Frankine Volkswagen? If so, you may be at risk for an exciting condition known as New Car Joy.

Symptoms may include spontaneous smiling, sudden increases in confidence and uncontrollable urges to take the scenic route. If you experience any of these symptoms, don't worry. The only known treatment is enjoying your new vehicle. Side effects may also include great value and exceptional customer service. Talk to a friendly professional at Frankine Volkswagen today and see if upgrading your car is the right prescription for you. Onward. In the good old days of gunboats and plume device roys, the British oil company in Persia originally named Anglo-Persia and later Anglo-Iranian,

before coming clean as British Petroleum, illustrated very well the phenomenon of a business enterprise forced to intervene in the domestic affairs of the home host country. under the impelent pressure of local political realities. Anglo-Persian received its concession from Shah Mosafar al-Din of the Qahar dynasty, head of the modestly titled Sublime Government of Iran in 1901. But soon discovered that the Tehran government had very little control of the southwestern and coastal Kuzestan region, where the company was actually exploring and later producing oil. A local potentate, the sheikh of Mohamara controlled the western part of Kusestan at the head of the Persian Gulf, and the chiefs, Khans of the nomadic or better transhumans, Bakhtyari tribes, controlled eastern Kusistan. Both the sheikh and the Khans were nominally subject to the Tehran government, but in fact, independent.

The company had to accept political realities. To protect the safety of its installations, it paid off the Sheik, a properly dignified extortionist. The British government, however, tried to regularize the situation by supporting the autonomy of the Sheik against the central government, and the company, being closely associated with the British government, identified itself with the autonomy of the Sheik. when the energetic cavalry officer Reza Khan took power eventually as a new Shah and restored the authority of the central government, the British company found itself penalized for its support of the sheikh. The relationship between the company and the Bakhtiari Khans was even more complicated. The company realized that its wells and pipelines could only be protected by coming to an arrangement with the local de facto power. This time, however, instead of one sheik, there were many different cons, all involved in contentious tribal politics, whose chronic, sometimes violent instability prejudiced the security that the company was trying to buy.

The natural solution was adopted. The company, together with British consular authorities, entered into tribal politics in order to promote a paramount chief who would clarify and stabilize the situation. The feuds among the cons, however, were never concluded, and the tribal politics of the company were brought to an end only when the central government of Reza Palavi finally disarmed the cons and gained control of the entire territory. Thus, the company, merely in order to protect its installations and to avoid paying double taxation to two rival authorities, had to enter politics at three different levels. It operated A, in tribal politics to promote and maintain the power of the paramount chief of the Bactiari, B, in national politics to preserve the autonomy of the sheikh of Mahamara against the central government, and C, in international politics to detach the sheikdom from Persia, acting in association with the British consular authorities in the Gulf. what action must be taken by the planners of the coup in the event of the presence of such sub-states in the target country?

In a few extreme cases, their consent may be necessary. They tend to have their ears to the ground and will probably be aware of the imminent coup before the official intelligence outfits. This consent can be obtained by a suitable mixture of threats and promises, and in this case, promises do not always have to be kept. Elsewhere, they will act as just one more factor with which the coup has to deal. But increasingly, after the political education they have received at the hands of nationalist forces everywhere, foreign business interests have learned that neutrality is sweet. Yeah, this goes back to the idea that we can't really separate public, private,

and view companies or entities like that as being completely independent and detached from political realities. In many of these places, they have to become major players. If you look at a big, complex country like the United States, you have to ask yourself, at a certain size or scale, can a company remain entirely independent? Unfortunately, like most Americans, we just haven't really been very, like we talk about it, but I don't think we realize how much this influences politics here and abroad. And so the idea that these companies can just remain completely independent players, neutral, obviously neutrality in a stable system is desirable.

But there are certain situations and places where that's impossible. And so decisions will often be made by companies, by locals, or when there's regime change. And we tend to look at these things through the prism of strictly ideology, because it's the only way we can really make sense of things we don't understand, but there is a much deeper reality here, and it's played out so many times in world history. New heading, regional entities. The essence of the coup is the seizure of power within the main decision-making center of the state,

and through this, the acquisition of control over the nation as a whole. We have seen that in some cases the decision-making process is too diffused through the entire state bureaucracy and the country at large. In other cases, the supposed political center is controlled by another foreign center or by sectional forces independent of the whole state machinery. A similar problem arises when powers in the hands of regional or ethnic blocks, which either use the supposed political center as an agency for their own policies or ignore the claims of the center and regard themselves as independent. Practically every Afro-Asian state has border areas, typically mountainous, swampy, and otherwise inaccessible,

which are inhabited by minority tribes. The control exercised by the government in these areas is often only theoretical. Where this sort of de facto autonomy extends to major population centers, the problem of the lack of organic disunity arises. It is, however, of no importance for the coup if the organic unit is in itself, large. The new regime can deal with local autonomies when it has seized power. Sometimes, however, the local units are so powerful that they control the center, or else the center rules only the immediate suburbs of the capital city.

This was often the case in the ex-Belgian Congo in the period 1960 to 1964, following independence and the mutiny of the force public. Though the Congolese Republic was constitutionally a unitary state, not a federal one, it quickly lost control of most of the provinces, which behaved as if they were independent entities. Within each province, local factions were in conflict and the central government's faction tended to be one of the weakest. Do you mind if I step in for a minute, Pete, on this? Go right at. It might make, uh, Congo is kind of a tough situation.

in the 60s most people don't really know much about it very worthwhile like to study but a good example of a similar situation is Afghanistan and I think that this this type of analysis the treatment of Congo is a good way to look at why Afghanistan was such a failure for what our purported goals were there it was almost the exact same situation where you have provinces that are mostly controlled by local factions there's a huge ethnic and regional powers that are separated from the central government that often were autonomous, independent. And so what's interesting is just consider what kind of news you'd be getting from Afghanistan. You'd hear about attacks and so on. But most Americans couldn't tell the difference between the different tribes

and different ethnic groups in the region. They didn't really understand how the central government was incredibly weak and ineffective, lots of corruption. And then we would see displays of things like like voting and you know we'd see all these people walk around with their blue thumbs and to an american that would seem like progress but if you were in afghanistan you would see that that really meant almost nothing even if these places were going through the motions um the central government was never really viewed as anything legitimate or real in the lives of most afghans unless they were maybe closer to the center of power and so i think many americans really shocked by the collapse of afghanistan but people who have been there especially

some time there could anticipate that something like this if it was going to collapse and fail that it would look just like what played out all right this is a timeline of uh this is the political situation in the south kossi province of the congo 1960 and 1961 the following groupings were contending for the control of the province a the traditional chiefs forces available tribal warriors b the south kousai separatists like led by the self-described king, Albert Colongi, forces available while equipped, if undisciplined troops led by Belgian officers, nominally ex-Belgian Belgians. C. The central government. Forces available.

Young and inexperienced administrators would lose control over small and far-from-combative National Army, ANC, units in the eastern part of the province. D. The mining company for Mnayyed resources available, financial support, and air transport occasionally made available to Kalongist and other groups. The situation in Katanga was even more unfavorable to the central government, while the northwest and the Stanleyville area were in the hands of the Gazenga forces. Much of the rest of the country could not be reached by government officials because of the break. down in law and order, along with the disruption of transportation facilities. Thus, a successful coup in the Congolese capital of Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, would only have one control of a very small fraction of the Great Congolese Republic. Several different coups would

have been needed in the various de facto capitals, Stanleyville, Elizabethville, Luluburg, org, etc., in order to control the whole country. Federal states represent the overt and constitutional recognition that regions have a local power base and are, therefore, granted a corresponding measure of local autonomy. In confederations, the power of the center comes from the voluntary union of the regions, and until the central institution develops its own sources of power and authority, it is the regions that rule, using the center only as an agency for their common policies. The United States was the product of a voluntary union of diverse states, and until the growth of presidential authority in the course of the 19th century, the government in Washington was little more than an agency that served the states in the regulation of foreign commerce and for the common defense. Thus, a coup staged in Washington in, say, 1800 would have seized very little. By 1900, however, the growth of the federal powers was such that a coup could ensure considerable control. over much of the country.

The Russian Federation, Canada, India, and Germany are all federal states, but the effective degree of autonomy of each component state or province varies greatly, from very little in Putin's Russia, even though governors are now again elected, to the broad autonomy of Canadian provinces. The fact that constitutionally, the Russian republics are supposed to be fully autonomous and even entitled to secede from the Federation is another example of the perpetual contrast between theoretical structures and political realities. The inherent dynamics of power are inimical to federal systems, which are forever centralizing in less and less federal fashion, or else decentralizing with or without a consensual agreement, or orderly and agreed process in a way that can

easily evolve into outright separatism. That is what is happening. now in both the United Kingdom, which was always more accurately the United Kingdoms and in Spain, not a gathering of kingdoms under one crown is in the British case, but with regional autonomies only recently recognized. In each case, separatism has become a political, a major political force in one of the parts, Scotland and Catalonia, respectively, which may well be independent states in the future. I really between theoretical structures and politically and a coup d'etat. does this matter, but even within exercising power, when Americans saw what was going on with Texas and the border, you know, there's kind of this like old desire to see the states stand up

against the federal government and exercise some kind of upward pressure to change policy. I don't think that that's a bad idea when I say this, but I think that it often, the way that these kinds of pressure campaigns from a more decentralized units, the way they're perceived by us is a little bit outdated. It takes a lot of work. And this is kind of the question is in the United States, and we're just talking theory here, if the United States had experienced a coup d'etat, how would a successful coup d'etat look? And, you know, like Lutuat brings up earlier, is a coup d'etat in 1800 would have probably been, even though it could have been more successful at taking over the national government, probably wouldn't have been successful at taking over the country.

And then in 1900, it would have been a lot harder to take over the central government. And then on top of that, you're left with the same problem of being unable to really administer power to the states. And so, you know, what does it look like in 2004 is I think we're seeing that even the political machinery, even if you're trying to account for that in the United States, it's so much more complex and deep than I think we even know. that, you know, I hear this a lot from other people when they get really frustrated. I think they imagine that the only way to fix things politically is to get a mass movement in the streets and to pressure and scare the national government. And I think that if you look at the way Lutok's analyzing this and you try to analyze our situation

the same way, that would be a very, that would be a very dumb idea. And that would not change the political status quo. And so I think it's important to look and make that distinction between the political realities in this day and age versus what they were in the past and then what they were theoretically. Yeah, I asked Cooper. I said if Project 2025 is their main goal is to dismantle the administrative state. Would he consider that to be a coup? And he said, not by Lutwock standards, but by Thurbanonautwark standards, but by

his standards, yeah, dismantling the administrative state and giving the power back to the executive and the legislative would certainly be a coup. Yeah, I tend to agree with Cooper on that. And I also think, like, what would it look like? Let's say that you throw like an Eric Prince into like a deputy position and he takes like an agency and he strips it down so we don't dismantle it entirely, but you take just one federal agency And you essentially just strip it down to 100 people versus 15,000, right? That would be a major difference.

It would change things. It probably won't go down in the history books as a coup, but considering the status quo we're living under, it would feel like a coup. Yeah. All right. Onward. The idea that political power should be concentrated in one controlling center for the nation as a whole derives from the presupposition that the interests of each region are best served

decision-making in a national framework. This presumption, interestingly enough, is usually accepted only after the destruction of the local power structures. Thus, it is agreed by most inhabitants of England, if not Scotland, and France, that major political decisions ought to be made in London and Paris rather than on a local level. But this intellectual recognition followed, rather than preceded, the crushing of the barons and of the independent states of Burgundy, province, Anjou, and Wales. In many underdeveloped areas, the power of local barons is still very real and local movements based on linguistic or ethnic affiliations are actively attempting to gain either greater autonomy or else full de facto independence. As of 2015, the central governments of India, Kenya, Mali, Myanmar, Pakistan, and China are all experiencing violent conflicts with separatist

elements. Among all such instances where local populations do not accept the superiority of centralized decision-making, we have to differentiate between the very possible implications for the coup. A, if the regions are the real center of power, the coup must either confine itself to one region or extend to all of them. The supposed center must be just one more target area. This extends and complicates the coup, while the weakness of the coup's forces in each single capital may invite counter-coup activity. B. If one or two regions dominate the whole country. This was the situation in Nigeria before the momentous coup of January 15, 1966. The northern region, ruled by the traditional Fulani and Hausa Emirs, was the largest region by far. Its ruler, the Sardana of Sukhotho

So Amadu Bello was in full control of its internal politics, whereas the situation in the other regions was more fluid and more democratic. Thus, Amadu Bello, in association with political forces in one other region, dominated the whole federation. The young Igbo soldier officers who carried out the first coup, therefore, had to allocate as much of their efforts to Bello and as capital as to the federal capital, and the federal leadership. In the event, they killed both the federal prime minister, Abu Bakar, Tafawa, Balewa, and Bello. But they were overextended so that Major General Johnson, Thomas, Umanakwe, Agu, uh, Iranzi,

the senior officer of the army acting with the police and bureaucracy, staged a counter coup and seized power on his account. The existence of national forces strong enough to control the supposed center may make a coup impossible. If the regional or ethnic bloc is organized along tribal lines, the structures of its leadership will be too firm and intimate for a coup to function from within. There has never been a coup in Lebanon, for example, because it is based on such an arrangement. The Shia, Maronite Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Druze blocks are all mutually hostile, but they were, recognize the fact that no single group can hope to dominate all the others, not even Hezbollah, now the strongest by far. Thus, the Beirut government functions as a common clearinghouse for these

policies that are accepted by each ethnic bloc. If one carried out a coup in Beirut, it would immediately lead to the collapse of the system, since each group, backed by their own armed forces, would seize power in their own region. The coup would therefore only capture parts of Beirut and suburbs, it would probably be unable to retain control beyond that area. Lebanon provides an extreme example of the role of ethnic and regional forces in a coup. In each individual instance, there will be a particular balance of power between the respective regions as well as between each of the regions in the center. The effects of the coup would have to be allocated so as to deal with each ethnic and regional

block on the basis of an estimate of its role in the particular balance of force. In a few cases, a coup may be impossible because the nature and extent of regional power is such as to require resources beyond those likely to be available. Elsewhere, it will be just one more obstacle to overcome. The third precondition of the coup, therefore, is, the target state must have a political center. If there are several centers, these must be identifiable, and they must be politically, rather than ethnically, structured. If the state is controlled by a non-politically organized unit, the coup can only be carried out with his consent or neutrality. Pete, I just wanted to bring up one thing is, as the reader is listening to this, is to try to look again at the United States and ask yourself, what is the

political center in America? Are there multiple centers? And then finally, the idea of, do we have a politically organized state or is it ethnically structured? Now, maybe the center of power might be politically structured and our states formally are politically structured, but we're seeing the emergence of ethnic structures as well within government and right, well, within our country. And so there's something interesting here that we're in a state of transition. You know, you look at like an example, an extreme example would be something like Dearborn, Michigan, that there's not only a political structure, but there has become like a, religious structure as well to that place.

And when we look at these new waves of immigration, but we're not just dealing with like Latin American countries. We're now dealing with populations in which more ethno or religious governance, even if it's like the de facto rather than the de jour is becoming present in this country. And so I just think it's something interesting to keep your eye on and we can't really rely

on the old assumptions that we might have had about our society 30 years ago. Well, that's just returning to the past, right? I mean, the E. Michael Jones talks about how this country's pretty much always been a struggle between Protestant Catholic and Jewish interests. Yeah, no, I think, you know, I think it's a great point because I've long kind of felt that we are reverting towards a mean if we take our history, all 400 years of our history, and we look at that, that really the mean that we're playing, like seeing, we're living in the end of an aberration in a way, even in the history of the world. and we are reverting towards a mean, which is really interesting when we talk about things like national symbols and what we wish to accomplish politically. You know, that's something that gets kind of lost because of the way we might have grown up, but it's definitely real. So I tend to agree with that.

All right. Moving on, I'm going to finish up right now. Ethnically structured is a rather awkward phrase. It is intended to cover social groups whose leadership is evolved by clear-cut and well-established, usually hereditary, If a particular traditional leadership controls the state, we cannot seize power by carrying out a coup in the state's controlling center, nor can we penetrate the traditional leadership because we would be excluded automatically as usurpers and outsiders. In Burundi, for example, the traditional Watutsi hierarchy controlled the state. In order to seize power in Burundi, it would have been necessary to penetrate the hierarchy, but this was. would only be possible if, A, we were Watutsi, and B, we belong to the aristocracy, though in that regard, there has been a diffusion of power. In Rwanda, power was also controlled by traditional Watutsi chiefs who had subjected the Bahutu majority. Then there was a revolution, and the leadership

became Bahutsu political rather than Watutsi traditional, until the former launched a genocidal campaign, followed in turn by a Watsutsutsi re-conquest whose leadership is not traditional. A coup would, therefore, be possible. If a political entity is actually controlled by a group that is not structured politically, then obviously political methods cannot be used to seize power. This is the case of a country dominated by a business unit. Imagine, for example, that Wall Street did control the United States, in the sense that the president in Congress acted as its stooges. If that were the case, power could not be seized

in Washington. Returning to reality, Katanga in the early 1960s and the Central American Banana Republics of the 1950s were examples of states whose real centers were politically impenetrable because they were not there in the first place. And that is the end of chapter two, and that's where we'll end. Any, uh, any closing? thoughts yeah I just love the idea of asking ourselves what is politically impenetrable here in the United States and with the growth of globalization foreign interests being very much involved in our politics how do you change that is it a matter of just flipping a congressman to support you and to support the country as

its own independent entity or how do you resolve those problems what is politically impenetrable think it's really important thing to ask but thank you for having me on Pete. I really appreciate it. No, no, thank you. Thank you for coming on. And do you have anything to promote? Yeah, we did just have, speaking of Project 2025, I am 1776, of which I'm an editor, just published an interview with Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation

and amongst other things, including the assassination attempt and the work they've been doing. We talked a little bit about Project 2025. So feel free to go check it out. Let me ask you a question. What people will say is, is that if Project 2025 is looking to dismantle the administrative state is looking to give the power back to, basically to bring us back to where we once were in this country when it comes to how we're governed, how can we trust the Heritage Foundation when they're just a part of the machine. That's a question I hear all the time when I'm talking about Project 2025. Yeah, I think it's a great question. I mean, I don't have any special insight necessarily, have my own thoughts. I'm kind of conflicted on this subject, to be honest. But I think that's a

very valid concern. I think typically I tend to take anyone or anything that comes from the DC Beltway and usually employees, no offense to anybody, but like nerds, to do things. things politically like this. I always am a little skeptical. I do say what I've seen them do. I've been fairly impressed by many of the things I've seen in their plan, but I do think for those of us that are outside the center of power, it's really important to be, you know, show some scruples, be very skeptical of plans that would take the country back, but they're, you know, kind of coming from the same crowd that took us to the place we're at in the first place. So that means no reflection on heritage. I don't really have.

an opinion i've seen a lot of good stuff that they've done but i i think people have a reason to always be skeptical about things well then someone can come back and always say well you know caesar was an insider pinotche was an insider franco was an insider you know it's always an insider that actually uh makes change yeah i mean that's a great point i mean napoleon was a jacobin at one time because anybody who was any planning to do anything had to be a jacobin you know i think I think there's a danger on the right where we worry about certain kinds of purity when it comes to opportunity. And there are people that are just ambitious. And then there are people who do have principles but recognize the landscape and they have to play with the cards that they're dealt.

I think that this goes back to what Lutwok is talking about is like if you're going to change things, you're not going to really, and I don't mean no disrespect to those of us on the periphery, but real change is going to happen on inside. It doesn't mean you have to be on the inside, but you have to be close to it, right? You have to understand it. I don't really believe in peasant rebellions. I think they're important because they can apply up or pressure and galvanize people like a Caesar, but they're not going to win on their own terms.

100% agree. And I just want to apologize if my audio has some kind of noise on it today in the background. My power kept going out and I have an electric generator running in the room. And it just sounds like snow. So if that came through, I apologize. but I appreciate everybody tuning in. And thanks, Lafayette. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much.