The 20th century was the golden age of the military coup. Although largely unknown in the stable countries of the Anglosphere, military takeovers were for some time a more common way of changing governments than elections across Latin America and the newly independent states of Africa and Asia. The coup-makers were encouraged by the Cold War, with both the USA and the USSR plotting to put their ideological supporters in power in crucial countries via military interventions. Sympathetic regimes thus installed could act as proxies, backing either the capitalist West or the communist East.
Notable examples of American-backed right-wing coups were the overthrow of leftist governments in Brazil (1964) and Indonesia (1965); the so-called Colonels’ coup in Greece in 1967; and the bloody end of Salvador Allende’s socialist presidency in Chile in 1973. For its part, the Soviet Union was particularly active in the Middle East, encouraging leftist coups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen in the 1960s, along with the ultimately disastrous communist takeover in Afghanistan in 1979.
Many historians trace the origins of the modern coup to Europe, where in December 1851, Napoleon I’s nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who was already the elected President of the French Second Republic, suddenly consolidated his power at a stroke – by arresting his opponents, banning rival political parties, exiling enemies such as the writer Victor Hugo, and censoring the press. His seizure of the state was completed by proclaiming himself Emperor – emulating his uncle, who had seized power in Paris by force in 1799, ending ten years of chaos that had followed the 1789 French Revolution. Napoleon III’s Empire lasted for 20 years, before falling after France’s defeat in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War.
Finding Eden and fighting extinction