Color Revolution

From America’s “Color Revolution”, by Marisol Nostromo, Medium.com, December 22, 2019:

For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the term "Color Revolution", it refers to what has now become the standard technique for promoting “regime change” in targeted nations....

Color Revolutions are expensive ($5 billion in the case of Ukraine) and are typically orchestrated by a public-private partnership comprised of government agencies such as the State Department and MI6 and/or CIA, combined with private funding and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The most famous organization of this sort is the National Endowment For Democracy, a curious entity that is funded by the US Government through USAID (as well as by donations from major neocon private foundations), and has two sub-organizations that disseminate the funds to various Regime Change projects: the International Republican Institute, affiliated with the Republican Party, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, affiliated with the Democrats. Both organizations carry out the same activity, which underscores the fact that on matters of subverting and bullying the rest of the world, there is a lot more bipartisanship in the US than people are inclined to think.

Another name associated with funding and orchestration is George Soros, whose various tax-exempt organizations such as the Open Society Foundations invariably pump money into the latest Color Revolutions,...

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama embraced the neocon ethos and gave them virtual carte blanche to carry out Color Revolutions around the world. ...

But it was inevitable that these techniques would eventually be used on the US itself. Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of reducing US reliance on Regime Change wars and NATO “out-of-area deployments” as a centerpiece of foreign policy. This was anathema to the neocons. ...

The standard methodology was put into play the moment Trump was inaugurated. ...

No one in their right mind believed that the confused and incoherent Biden could defeat the also incoherent, but clever and confident Trump....

Violent groups from the Antifa milieiu, predominately white and possibly assets of the FBI’s COINTELPRO progam, initiated vandalism and looting. Neocons were salivating at the prospect of Maidan-style chaos....

The good news is that the neocons are not omnipotent. They are adept at conning the public and they have the full cooperation of the corporate media, but the public is volatile and increasingly skeptical of the official “narratives.” ...

Lincoln A. Mitchell explains in the book The Color Revolutions:

From late 2003 through mid-2005, a series of peaceful street protests toppled corrupt and undemocratic regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and ushered in the election of new presidents in all three nations. These movements—collectively known as the Color Revolutions—were greeted in the West as democratic breakthroughs that might thoroughly reshape the political terrain of the former Soviet Union....

The Color Revolutions explores the causes and consequences of all three Color Revolutions—the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan—identifying both common themes and national variations. Mitchell's analysis also addresses the role of American democracy promotion programs, the responses of nondemocratic regimes to the Color Revolutions, the impact of these events on U.S.-Russian relations, and the failed "revolutions" in Azerbaijan and Belarus in 2005 and 2006....

From Russia and the “Color Revolution” - A Russian Military View of a World Destabilized by the US and the West, by Anthony H. Cordesman, May 28, 2014:

... the “Color Revolution.” Russian analysts have used this term since the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2012, in discussing the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine in 2004, and the "Tulip Revolution" that took place in Kyrgyzstan in 2005.

Russian military officers now tied the term “Color Revolution” to the crisis in Ukraine and to what they saw as a new US and European approach to warfare that focuses on creating destabilizing revolutions in other states as a means of serving their security interests at low cost and with minimal casualties. It was seen as posing a potential threat to Russian in the near abroad, to China and Asia states not aligned with the US, and as a means of destabilizing states in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia....

Russia and the “Color Revolution” - A Russian Military View of a World Destabilized by the US and the West, KEY BRIEFS, and is available on the Burke Chair web site...

Left-leaning Wikipedia has a catalog and map of Color Revolutions.

From Explaining the Color Revolutions, by Poh Phaik Thien, E-International Relations, July 31 2009:

Scholars witnessed a ‘bulldozer revolution’ in Serbia in 2000, a ‘rose revolution’ in Georgia in 2003, an ‘orange revolution’ in Ukraine in December 2004 and then a ‘tulip’ revolution in Kyrgyzstan in early 2005. Besides these four revolutions, such political upheavals also impacted other post-Soviet countries with related and connected anti-regime’s reactions and movements. Although only the Orange color revolutions actually had a color as it symbolize this term, ‘color revolution’ has become a popular term for referring to the four revolutions that occurred among regional specialist and local politicians....

The United States President George W.Bush has been trying to transplant the model of color revolution in post-Soviet countries to transform Iraq, as he used the term ‘Purple Revolution’ to describe the coming of democracy to Iraq...

... there are four criteria which must be satisfied. Firstly, their incumbent leader of the regimes must be very unpopular and face the so-called ‘lame-duck syndrome’. Secondly, the anti-regimes forces are enforced by mass-media and foreign influences. Thirdly, the revolution must not be ideological; it must be for the sake of better national integration, freedom, democracy and economic development. Most importantly, the demand for such improvement should be massive among the population. Lastly, the anti-regime forces should also be motivated by the grievances on the corrupted government which is supported by a foreign state which the people do not desire.

Why the Color Revolutions Failed - Toppling dictators isn't enough. Successful revolutions also embrace the rule of law. By Melinda Haring, Michael Cecire, Foreign Policy,March 18, 2013:

Why did they fail? Quite simply, the rule of law never took root. Too often, the color revolution governments acted above or with little regard to the democratic legal standard to which they held their predecessors....

An in-depth analysis of The Color Revolution Model: An Exposé of the Core Mechanics, by Andrew Korybko, Center for Syncretic Studies, December 3, 2015:

Conclusion:

A Color Revolution is a complex interplay of many parts operating simultaneously. The Movement has to properly build its six Infrastructures prior to the onset of the public destabilization, and it needs an Event to galvanize its support and justify its actions to the targeted audiences. The Physical Infrastructures assist the Movement in gaining traction and attention, and they make the Color Revolution appear popular and spontaneous...