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?

Shauk

find a new planet.

stevie667

I'd buy a few islands from some nice pacific island state, buy a frigate and plunk it offshore then get to work on building casinos and beach huts.

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Willravel

Ah, but if you declare independence, the military shows up at your door. Otherwise, you simply own property.

Baraka_Guru

I would begin my research here: Principality of Sealand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Let me come back to this; I need to think about it.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Daniel_

[QUOTE=Willravel;2732205]Ah, but if you declare independence, the military shows up at your door. Otherwise, you simply own property.[/QUOTE

Buy enough property in a sovereign state with a small population, and splash enough cash about you can get a country to vote you its president for life.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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Shell

...you lost me in your top line,
"You've made ungodly amounts of money"

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..."Say what you think. Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" ~ Dr. Seuss

Willravel

The idea is that money shouldn't be a variable in our hypothetical. If that's not the case, the whole thing becomes about a million times more difficult.

inBOIL

An army of genetically-engineered jumping spiders, bred for intelligence, strength, and loyalty.

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And you believe Bush and the liberals and divorced parents and gays and blacks and the Christian right and fossil fuels and Xbox are all to blame, meanwhile you yourselves create an ad where your kid hits you in the head with a baseball and you don't understand the message that the problem is you.

genuinegirly

Seems like it'd be easier to grab a bunch of people and settle Io or Callisto. Jupiter's moons are so far off from anyone else's radar, you'd be able to set up quite a population center before anyone else bothers to get there.

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"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

Martian

Y'know, I'm a Canadian, and I think we're pretty much up there with the Russians in terms of resistance to cold. However, I seem to recall the surface temperature of Io maxing out somehwere around -70C. That's a wee bit too cold for me.

Sealand is a good example of how to do it. Set yourself up in international waters. It seems like floating an oil derrick or something out there would be a good way to start -- then find an unclaimed island or two, maybe somewhere out in the Pacific (there's loads of them along the Pacific Rim, from what I understand) and claim it in the name of your recently declared principality. Start minting a currency, get some infrastructure in place and build a small military. Done.

The hardest part would be getting people to emigrate to your new nation, but with the right incentives it ought to be doable.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Charlatan

Off shore banking and data services.

There are always people who want to invest and there are always people needed to assist in making those investments happen.

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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

girldetective

Are you writing a screenplay, willravel?

As Charlatan said above, I would become a bank in and of myself, and bring others along with me.

In the case of a dictatorship (as in the OP) I would hire assassins, put myself in power and help the people by giving loans, building infrastructure, bringing my friends business connections in for jobs, hiring people to work for me and their country, putting social services in place, looking at the environment, and how to wield the country's way in the world. An unethical start, with a happy ending? Its hard to make all people happy, and im not sure i would want to live with myself after.

I would rather homestead a place, and do the same as above. A benevolent dictator.

Were talkin a whole lotta dough here.

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As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons...be cheerful; strive for happiness - Desiderata

Willravel

Nah, I just wanted something new and interesting in "How-To".

KellyC

I would just hire a group of battle hardened, former special op mercenaries like (now defunct) Executive Outcomes. From the documentary I saw about them few years back, they were far more effective than UN forces when they dealt with rebel forces in Sierra Leon, AND at a much lower cost.

So they'd go in a dictatorship country, like North Korea, and just off the top members of the government there. I would have to pay them very handsomely so they'd keep my identity a secret should they be caught. The special ops group would need fake government documents, basically OK-ing the operations. It'd be the Chinese...because they're tired of North Koreans slipping into their border. Their rationale for the operation is to create a better North Korea so its citizens would actually want to stay, thereby not further adding to the already tremendous population problem. Yeahhhhh.

I'd also hire a group of media/advertisement/communication consultants to show the North Koreans information, images, news, and entertainment from the outside world to see what they're missing. They will know the meaning of Democracy, and what's it's like to go a day on a FULL stomach. Once they realize they've been screwed over for the past several decades by the Kim family and cronies, they'll support special ops and we can use guerrilla warfare tactics to fight the government. The media consultants will also be responsible for creating propaganda to recruit *North Korean soldiers* and civilians to join my side. All of this will be somewhat difficult since we're talking about undoing decades worth of brainwashing. But we will be relentless with our slogans and images of busty babes in bikinis spreading the news of Democracy, prosperity, liberty, equality, and their arms and legs, hugging and embracing the North Koreans. Brainwashed they may be, but I'm willing to bet good money that biology will trump being brainwashed (I could be wrong though, but let's not be so technical). They will ogle...and ogle they shall. Because, let's face it, the most exciting thing that happened to North Korea in recent years is Bill Clinton's visit. I have to make things exciting and engaging for them.

So once I get the government to be in a state of suspicion and vulnerability, and the people on my side, revolution is inevitable. Once my force is victorious. I will emerge as the man behind the plan. The Chinese will probably be pissed at me for using them as a scapegoat but there's nothing that a few parcel of unused land, and some acknowledgment that Chinese civilization is superior to Korean civilization won't fix. So once everything is settled down, I'll be facing a tough choice of weather to hold democratic elections, or be a benevolent dictator....that is...as long as you don't speak out against me.

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Him: Ok, I have to ask, what do you believe?
Me: Shit happens.

ASU2003

The problem is they changed the definition of international waters to 200 miles off the coast instead of 12 miles. So, the first order of business is to reject that law. Now, I would build an island. It can be a floating island using shipping containers, large barges, or by gathering up tons of plastic trash. It may be easier to start a new island in the Caribbean. They are used to small islands. Though a hippy paradise off the coast of San Fransisco would work too. The weather would be better in the South Pacific and you may just be able to claim an island for youself and reject the claim of whatever nation currently says it belongs to them.