DURING the past 23 years, more than half of the world's governments have been overthrown by coups d'etat. Conspirators are increasingly aware that complex societies are vulnerable to attack. Slash a wire, start a rumor, dump LSD into reservoirs: today any determined guerrilla can stop The System. One man with one bullet can change history. A handful can take over a country.
This knowledge has now been systematized in Coup d'Etat, A Practical Handbook, which shows that in practice things are not so easy. Published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the book has already been translated into French, Dutch and Italian. It could well become an underground bestseller in nations with a history of toppling regimes, ranging from Peru to Syria, which probably holds the world record in coups—nine attempts since 1949, eight of them successful. Author Edward Luttwak notes that while the number of the world's doctors, teachers and engineers is increasing only slowly, that of army officers is rising sharply. For the benefit of the latter, he offers a blueprint of the steps necessary for taking over the state. In the process, he shows himself to be a cross between Walter Mitty and Niccolo Machiavelli, a dreamer and a schemer combined.
Luttwak brings some impressive credentials, if not empirical expertise, to his task. He is bright, cynical, multilingual and only 26, a vintage revolutionary age. Asked his nationality, he answers, "When?" Son of an orange importer, he was born in 1942 in a Hungarian enclave in what was then Rumanian-ruled Transylvania. He was raised in Italy, polished at the London School of Economics, worked for CBS News in Eastern Europe, later joined what he describes as a "consulting agency," whose chief clients were oil companies. He traveled in the Middle East, evaluating the stability of-governments in the area.
Unlike a revolutionary assault from the outside, Luttwak notes, a coup is an inside job, done by a government's own members. It involves minimal manpower and bloodshed. As in judo, the secret is to use leverage and make a state overthrow itself. Bureaucracy facilitates this by severing the loyalties that once personally bound rulers and their servants. A modern bureaucrat follows impersonal orders; if his immediate boss is subverted, the bureaucrat tends to obey orders blindly, even orders designed to topple his own government.
According to Luttwak, a coup requires three preconditions: 1) a highly centralized government with a seizable seat of power, 2) a passive people not likely to react to a takeover and 3) the assurance that no foreign power will intervene. These prerequisites usually rule out federal nations, healthy democracies and protected client states. Europe, he observes, has had only three successful coups—in Czechoslovakia, Greece and Turkey—during tie past 24 years. By contrast, numerous regimes in Africa and Latin America offer what Luttwak calls "gratifying" opportunities. So does South Viet Nam, provided that the U.S. winks at the plotters (as it did when President Ngo Dinh Diem fell in 1963).