Why no military coup in India and Israel during Cold War?

Army conceived to fight world war III and army conceived to do occasional peace-keeping missions after democratic end of history occurred in 1991, were two very different types of animal.
With regards to the USAF, (along with the aviation portions of the USN and the USMC) the money and effort expended since 1991 on programs such as the F35 leads me to a different conclusion.

In my view the other U.S. Services (including the Army) have also retained the ability to engage in high intensity combat if need be.
 
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I can't speak towards India, other than to say that the strength of their democratic institutions in the face of widespread deprivation of the underclass has been surprisingly strong and that being separated from Pakistan and Bangladesh politically speaking probably allowed for them to avoid some of the dysfunction present in those societies, making the job much easier.

As for Israel, who would the coup be done by, and why? The rates of identification with the state on a civic and patriotic level is high enough there that this would obviously be opposed, and the military has never really had any reason to feel as if it was an institution not taken care of by the government. I suppose its possible that if levels of racism are high enough towards the Mizrahi population and political polarization is bad enough, some hardliner left wing types in the Ashkenazi Alignment establishment could have alleged irregularities and done something to keep hold of the state in an effort to keep the (much browner) right wing out of power in the 1977 elections. But this seems very unlikely to come about. Perhaps an Altalena affair that goes much worse and with a much more powerful Irgun and a leader without the foresight of Begin could have brought this about.

Both of these countries have strong democratic institutions resilient enough to make coups seem unlikely. Now, both countries have also shown, like many others as of late, a tendency towards illiberal democracy in many regards. But a coup during the Cold War? Unlikely.
 
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Exaggerated concern on the part of the military as a political gambit to get more funding is as old as ancient Athens.
Just because some people falsely shout fire in theatre, doesn't mean theatres are fire-proof.
 
Just because some people falsely shout fire in theatre, doesn't mean theatres are fire-proof.

It also isn't sufficient evidence of a fire. Neither is a lack of results in a low-intensity war where the government has heavily restricted the use of ground troops.
 
Yeah.
American: they have enough hardware and money thrown at their armed forces, to offset most leadership inadequacies, but still couldn't beat some backward fanatics for years. US fights ISIS longer than they did WWII.
British: they have less tanks than Serbia, they have a carrier without CAG. British armed forces are joke.
You realize ISIS was predominantly fought by local forces with American military aid, yes, and has only been around roughly three years?
 
Isn't it mandatory for the majority of Israelis to serve in the military? With those connections and shared experiences, I find it hard to see a random general upsetting such an interwoven part of their nation for their own personal gain. Everyone is drilled, disciplined, and ready to fight. Unless you can get the entire nation behind you, that coup isn't happening.
 
You realize ISIS was predominantly fought by local forces with American military aid, yes, and has only been around roughly three years?
It also isn't sufficient evidence of a fire. Neither is a lack of results in a low-intensity war where the government has heavily restricted the use of ground troops.
Such wishy-washy attitude is integral part of general incompetence of US armed forces. You either wage war on someone, or you don't: "Low intensity war" is a joke. They spend years fighting it and achieving nothing, until Mattis took off velvet gloves.
Since it took personnel changes in high-up echelons of US military, for US to be able to actually fight ISIS and achieve anything, I'd say that mu point that US armed forces were being staffed by idiots (although to large extent they still are), is correct one.
 
Such wishy-washy attitude is integral part of general incompetence of US armed forces. You either wage war on someone, or you don't: "Low intensity war" is a joke

The French, The British, The USA, The USSR, Ottoman Empire, Mexico, China, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, India, the Russian Empire and god knows how many other governments that have fought border wars, fought insurgents, rebels, and various native groups across their history who refused to fight open battles
 
The French, The British, The USA, The USSR, Ottoman Empire, Mexico, China, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, India, the Russian Empire and god knows how many other governments that have fought border wars, fought insurgents, rebels, and various native groups across their history who refused to fight open battles
Fighting "border wars, fought insurgents, rebels, and various native groups" is something that is forced upon you, so you have somewhat of an excuse if you do it poorly, since it wasn't what you wanted. But US wasn't attacked in Syria: they attacked it. And they've done it poorly. They simultaneously demonstrated will to war, and no capability to war.
If they wanted war, why not do it as quickly and painlessly as possible? If they didn't wanted war, why go there in the first place?
US is trying to take over Syria without invading it. "But Russia is stopping us!". Well, I am not surprised they do, given recent record of US regime changes. Funny thing is, Russia would gladly cooperate with US against ISIS, but US is too pigheaded to fight just one enemy, even if they couldn't handle two at the same time.
Smart thing to do now that ISIS is completely shattered, would be to declare "we won!" and get out of there while they could do it with face saved.
But they won't, they'll fight Assad, who is not in rush to resign, since he's being supported by Russia and Iran. Another quagmire like Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.
At least they have no troops in Libya, so they avoided taking responsibility for this particular clusterfuck.
 
Such wishy-washy attitude is integral part of general incompetence of US armed forces. You either wage war on someone, or you don't: "Low intensity war" is a joke. They spend years fighting it and achieving nothing, until Mattis took off velvet gloves.
Since it took personnel changes in high-up echelons of US military, for US to be able to actually fight ISIS and achieve anything, I'd say that mu point that US armed forces were being staffed by idiots (although to large extent they still are), is correct one.
Pardon? If you want an honest opinion, I think you need to do proper research before making general statements. You do realize most conflicts are not lightning fast victories and, by definition, nonconventional wars are among the most difficult to win? When you have an enemy reluctant to engage, who hides among the populace using them as shields, and whose main goal is sapping morale to win because they are too weak to do otherwise then you begin to see it isn't incompetence; it's more a game of public relations. The only true way to win a guerilla war is to steal it's base (the people) which removes their shelter and possible reinforcements. You're not of the mentality that we need to brutalize the populace or use weapons more effectively (really slam that nail with a sledgehammer), because that is by definition incompetent. I was an MI Officer so I know the difficulty of dealing with a hostile populace and how things radically change when you use words and actions to build trust.

You're looking at modern conflicts as conventional which they aren't (and many forces started training in anti-guerilla/counterinsurgency after the Cold War due to the likelihood of fighting stateless forces or regimes unwilling to face Goliath). American, British, and other forces have done an excellent job with what they have faced.

As for the Korean War, as some have posted above, the US military was gutted and no one thought another conflict was on the imminent horizon. It was reorganized on a defensive posture with a goal of return to isolationism. The fact that, despite initial deficiencies the war was won until Chinese intervention speaks volumes for American performance. And once more, the use of so many explosives was tied to conventional beliefs which don't work well against nonconventional forces.

Now whether you are trolling, I have no idea but don't label something incompetent unless you examine the reasons for perceived poor performance.
 
British: they have less tanks than Serbia, they have a carrier without CAG. British armed forces are joke.

Oh, for heaven's sake. The QE is on sea trials! She doesn't start fixed-wing trials until next year. By your logic the USS Ford is a joke because it has no CAW. I'm also not sure that one can compare the tank fleet of Serbia to Challenger 2s.
 
Isn't it mandatory for the majority of Israelis to serve in the military? With those connections and shared experiences, I find it hard to see a random general upsetting such an interwoven part of their nation for their own personal gain. Everyone is drilled, disciplined, and ready to fight. Unless you can get the entire nation behind you, that coup isn't happening.

My point exactly. The IDF is an effective cross-section of the non-Arab, non-Haredi population. You won't get the kind of separation between the military and civilian population needed for the military to back a coup. If the government is that unpopular, it would collapse. The only scenario I can come up with is some sort of insane election rigging scenario or the government trying to disenfranchise large swaths of the electorate, both of which are borderline ASB.
 
The Israeli populace is well trained and with some military experience; if there is to be a military coup there, it would be very popular or it would not outlast the legitimate government's cry for help. If popular, why not just elect the government they want?

I think this whole thread on the other hand is not paying enough attention to the context of superpower clientism, especially in the Cold War context. The thread's contributors are all assuming every coup is the result of purely internal politics when we should all realize that a great many of them are engineered, or at least encouraged, by great power interests far removed from domestic politics, and that if we wanted to explain the survival of many governments (these types being more often than not imposed by an initial coup) without reference to their Great Power patrons, we'd be pretty much at a loss to do so. Client governments need not, in extreme cases, rely on popular support at all--their economies and general technical development need not be capable of paying for or maintaining high tech and otherwise expensive paramilitary kit, not if some Uncle Sugar somewhere else in the world finds it on the whole worthwhile to kindly donate the tools of oppression. In that case, the primary basis of power in such regimes does not lie in their country at all, but in the favor of powers far overseas. I think if we weeded out all such cases as irrelevant to the theory and practice of stable civil government, we'd have a lot fewer coups to account for...but we'd also have a much reduced statistical universe of genuinely national states to consider too!

Anyway the question here is, why not India and Israel? The cases are quite different from each other, but I think in addition to valid points such as India's deliberately designed checks and balances and Israel's universal conscription, we have the fact that to put it bluntly neither of them is in the category of a typical Third World nation.

India is of course in most respects a classic case of what Third World means--but its sheer size, and the depth of its democratic traditions despite aberrations protect it from being capable of domination by some colonel funded by a black CIA budget. Had India's founders not taken care to develop an elaborated system designed to achieve checks on their military, it might have been possible for either American or Soviet agencies to subvert its armed forces somehow and impose a compliant dictatorship, but vice versa I think a small country that was decolonized with similar prudent political measures could still have been overturned anyway. Maybe size is not the key; in Central America there is the example of Costa Rica, a country which has not, since the 1930s anyway, been subject to dictatorship, avoiding being steamrollered by the Yankee machine. To be sure I believe this has been largely the work of a leadership that recognized that Uncle Sammy was going to get its way one way or another and resolved to trim the political sails to minimize any perception of threat and to make Costa Rica available to US interests, such as bases for the Contras raised against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s. But the nation has, perhaps at a high price, kept its effective independence and maintained civil liberties. (For one thing, it doesn't have an Army to pull a coup with, military forces having been much curtailed there).

But I do think given the challenges Indian nonalignment have posed to exasperate Western interests with over the scores of decades of Indian independence, a big part of Indian independence continuing meaningfully is its sheer size making a coup in foreign interests that much more difficult to carry out.

Israel on the other hand has got a status with respect to the developed European nations and the USA especially that makes support of this state despite the trouble it brings with the majority of people in the region attractive. The siege mentality of the dominant group of the nation, combined with ready support coming to them pretty much unconditionally, and the universal conscript service of all Israeli citizens, again makes a coup by a small foreign backed clique unlikely and certain to be fought vigorously should anyone foolishly attempt it.

I believe that if we somehow had a situation where the great powers were checked somehow from gross interference in the sovereign affairs of smaller nations, we'd see a lot fewer coups across the board.
 
Ain't that the rarest thing - a Cold War debate, where we stand accused of considering local conditions too much.
 
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