Willravel

So let's say that you've done well for yourself in life. You've made ungodly amounts of money, you've helped a lot of people, you've been on Jeopardy and you're ready for a new challenge. You've got a personal fortune in the tens of billions of Euros, you're well connected, and driven.

You'd like to start your very own country.

Wait, how does one start his or her own country in 2009? Let's break it down. Most recent nations are breakaways, revolutions, and the like. It's probably cheapest to secede from an existing, rather un-powerful and unhappy state, but there are rules to follow and politics to be done.

Here's how I would do it. Burma (Union of Myanmar) is not a nice place to live these days. Junta's are difficult to deal with, but they have an alarming weakness: civilians hate military juntas. There aren't a lot of peace-loving, equality supporting, happy-go-lucky military dictatorships. So how does one overthrow a military dictatorship? There are a few options. You can train civilians to fight in a revolution, but that's going to mean a lot of blood on both sides. You can bring in a private military, but that's going to be crazy expensive and would likely get frowns from the international community. You can send in a wet-squad to take out the head, but in most military dictatorships, there's always another asshole waiting in the wings to make things even worse. You can try the economic route, sanctions... but we're already sanctioning the crap out of Burma and it's only making the poor poorer.

Then there's my strategy: move business into Burma. I know it's an ultra-capitalist idea, but the truth is that history shows economic stability is a great, and often bloodless, way to bring about moderate reform and bring power back to the people. The sting of the existing sanctions may not sting the ruling generals the way it does the little people, but they do feel it and would benefit from a stronger economy. Imagine if large manufacturing centers were to open up with job training and fair wages, and willingly pay rather unreasonable taxes to the government. How could they say no? Suddenly you've got infrastructure popping up here and there and all at the cost of a few dozen factories. If the industry can start making money, then it will expand, and with expanding industry comes the need for better schools to provide better workers. With any luck, the University of Rangoon would be opening its doors in a decade. By this point, progressive movements would be clamoring for change and would have some money to back their demands. The military would still be drafting the poor, but there would be less and less extreme poor and less and less support for a military dictatorship. Eventually they'll cave on something, some issue. Maybe it'll be universal healthcare, maybe it will be universal education, maybe it will be reducing taxes on the poor, but it will be the sign that it's time for the coup d'état.

Unfortunately, in Burma, there was never going to be a bloodless, nonviolent revolution. The power is far too entrenched, and they're too set in militaristic and blood-thirsty ways. Pockets of nonviolent resistance would probably start cropping up eventually without any nudging, but having some control over the public airwaves would be key in getting the ball rolling. I've always like Jon Stewart's Daily Show, news masquerading as parody, because they always have their "but we're just a comedy show" excuse to fall back on. Burma needs a Jon Stewart, someone that starts with dick and fart jokes, but slowly starts moving towards veiled attacks on the dictatorship. This host would be curiously well guarded by the same forces responsible for bringing industry to Burma, and several attempts on his life would fail, further emboldening him. Eventually, other leaders of resistance would start popping up and, despite a few assassinations, the ball would already be rolling.

The real trick to this would be pulling off the assassinations in a way that caused infighting. The first few assassinations of relatively senior military leaders could be made to look like suicides, but as higher and higher ranking folks died, it would be best to point them in the direction of other high ranking military leaders. If I've learned anything from watching too many movies and reading too many books, the "bad guys" are generally susceptible to suspicion when they're in power. The final straw would be a private military force preventing a massacre, defending the people of Burma from the military. Burma would be sliding into civil war as I'd orchestrate a special episode of this news show where I was the guest. I'd talk about democratic republics, constitutions, parliament, and freedom, about a new Burma where the Burmese people would be free from tyranny and all that jazz. I'd position myself as the official leader of the resistance and then call for country-wide resistance of the shrinking and confused military.

Then I'd call for an election. I'd put my name on the ballot, along with whoever the lead general was and anyone else that could get 100,000 signatures, and set up well protected polling stations all over the country. I'd win without even having the cheat and would declare the military coup over, though they'd still be there, and then immediately call for nationhood before the UN, further legitimizing the democratic coup and start making deals with neighboring states for things like trade and diplomatic friendship.

Establishing the new country by the book would keep China from rolling in with tanks, as it would be a serious violation of UN rules.

The real key would be transitioning military control to the newly developing civilian government, out from under the generals. This would be the bloody part of the coup, without a doubt, but I suspect that we'd end up winning in the end.

So now I'm president of the Constitutional Republic of Burma, which is ratifying the new constitution state by state. I'm exhausted now so I go out for ice cream.

So how would you do it?