From the editor: The balance of power

So Victor Yanukovych apparently fled into parts unknown, trailed by charges of murder after months of political unrest and popular protest against his regime.

In shorthand, the revolt against the Ukrainian president began when his government rejected a potential agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia—notwithstanding Ukraine’s historic distrust of their neighbors, which runs so deep the people welcomed Hitler’s troops as liberators from their envelopment by the old Soviet Union. As a result, Ukrainians occupied the central square in Kiev, demanding Yanukovych withdraw himself from office.

What turned a peaceful demonstration into something more dramatic was the ruling government’s willingness to employ police against the opposition. What led to Yanukovych’s sudden evacuation was an apparent order allowing police to open fire on the protesters. As a result, 80 to 100 Ukrainians died, depending upon the source.

And the despised president scurried from his palatial home.

It’s a lesson that both despots (even desperate democratic leaders) need to relearn every generation: armed forces acting on the part of a government rarely quell a protest back by popular support and reliable cause, particularly when they blaze away with live ammunition.

Of course, it’s difficult for those holding power or authority to grasp this fact. In one of the many courses in military history I took over a long college career, the professor drew parallels between Kent State and the Boston Massacre.

As you recall, in 1774, British soldiers opened fire on a Boston mob pelting them with ice and stones, killing five. The colonists were, in general, unhappy with the presence of Redcoats—and with stiffer British policies in the wake of a costly war with France. In 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard called to the Kent State campus to restore order after students gathered to protest the American incursion into Cambodia. Some soldiers trained their weapons on the crowd, killing four.

A U.S. Army officer auditing the course informed the professor that the issue was obvious. “If you approach a line of armed soldiers—don’t, because you are going to lose,” he said. Clearly he was impressed by the harm dealt to unarmed civilians.

The military man could not comprehend that the success of an application of force is not measured in bodies or sudden quiet.

You see, history suggests that the mob in Boston did not lose. Within two years they—along with other colonists up and down the new world—published a Declaration of Independence. In less than a decade, they forced the British to sign a treaty and set up a new nation. I’m aware that it took a war to settle the matter, but it began with a military versus civilian confrontation. And the end result doesn’t sound like losing.

Although President Richard Nixon had already recognized our hopeless position in Vietnam, in the aftermath of Kent State, support for that war waned even further. In fact, most U.S. troops were out of Vietnam three years after the Ohio incident. In 1975, South Vietnam fell, with nary a shot from American troops.

Again, that doesn’t seem like a loss—except for the pro-war forces.

Union organizers in the U.S. gained strength after industrialists sent in hired thugs (and sometimes government troops) to gun down ordinary workers, leading to an era of unionized labor. When Czech students involved in a march honoring past heroes were met with a line of police, the communist government ended up creeping away. The non-violent response of Gandhi in India, Mandela in South Africa or civil rights protesters in this country to beatings, water cannons, lynching and other forms of violence ended with victory, but not for those enforcing authority.

In some instances, the outcome takes time. Soviet troops slaughtered Polish intellectuals, officers and other leaders in the Katyn Forest in 1940. Forty some odd years later, the opposition finally gathered itself at Gdansk, tipping a set of dominoes that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yes, I know. On occasion the guys with guns win. And in other cases, the opposition undercuts their spot on the moral high ground by trading atrocity for atrocity, bullet for bullet. Syria would be an example. But quite often, it’s the willful, peaceful protesters with popular right on their side and a new set of martyrs, courtesy of a heavy-handed regime, who win out in the end.

Why is that so difficult to comprehend?