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Political pressure along with a peaceful people's revolution worked pretty well with the Yellow Revolution in the Philippines, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Solidarity movement in Poland....
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Quite true. However, the above tactics only work with the targeted government either;
A: Gives a shit what its' constituents think of it, or
B: Gives a shit what the rest of the world thinks of it.
When you're dealing with the likes of the Iranian, Chinese, or North Korean (and frequently American) government, which neither gives a shit for it's constituents opinion nor a fart for anyone elses, nonviolent tactics lose their effectiveness. "Tank Man" was the bravest, hardest motherfucker of the last 100 years. That was MAGNIFICENT. But he didn't change or stop anything; thousands of Chinese civilians died, and the massacre has been so thoroughly covered up that most Chinese know of Tienanmen Square only as an idealistically ill-conceived "student uprising" which revealed only the need for greater military and political indoctrination in the University system.
The only true backup that any nonviolent movement posesses, the only thing to make an otherwise-indifferent State pay attention, is the threat of armed violence should the nonviolent means fail. Nobody played ball with Martin Luther King because they -wanted- to! They played ball because everybody from Hoover on down knew that if they didn't dance with Martin, they'd dance with Malcolm...and Malcolm wouldn't be unarmed, and he would be bringing lots of friends. Nobody in the British Gov't -wanted- to deal with Ghandi, but they knew that Nehru would be a -much- bigger pain in their arse, especially once railway lines and police stations started blowing up. Governments are -force-. Force, or the threat of force (even if unstated) is all they understand. What is an election, after all, but counting the heads in each army, calculating the odds, and giving the day to the anticipated victor?