Regimes Fall When Guards Refuse

Political collapse often hinges less on mass protest than on the willingness of armed subordinates to obey orders to repress. Episodes like the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall show that an absent or withheld order from the center — and the frontline decision not to fire — can cause an authoritarian order to unravel rapidly. — This reframes foreign‑policy and strategy debates: interventions that assume leader removal will produce liberal outcomes ignore the decisive role of lower‑level coercive obedience and command legitimacy.