Naunihal Singh on Zimbabwe and the Strategic Logic of Military Coups
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2017
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Wednesday, Zimbabwe's military placed President Robert Mugabe under house arrest and took over state institutions in what is largely considered a military coup. Naunihal Singh, author of "Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups" and professor at the Naval War College, joined Benjamin Wittes for a lively discussion on current events in Zimbabwe and the nature of coups in general. They discussed the defining elements of a military coup and its modern history, the politics surrounding Zimbabwe's situation and much more.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.2 | And so they want to deny that it's a coup. |
| 0:35.8 | So the way they're saying this is that that that Mugabe still commander in chief, but they're |
| 0:40.8 | acting to protect him against malign influences around him. |
| 0:45.1 | And one of the things they've done is they've arrested a number of cabinet ministers who |
| 0:50.2 | had been affiliated with with the first lady. |
| 0:54.7 | And so they're saying that they're doing this in support of the revolution and in fact |
| 0:59.1 | to protect the president. |
| 1:01.4 | But if in fact this was done to protect the president, then it would have been the president |
| 1:06.7 | who'd gone up on TV and it went to big in the middle of the night and he would have |
| 1:11.0 | told the nation himself the fact that it's a guy in a uniform means his actions are |
| 1:17.1 | undercutting his words and very deliberately so. |
| 1:21.4 | But this leaves us in an interesting position because they want Robert Mugabe's blessing |
| 1:27.0 | for the transition. |
| 1:28.8 | They want him to say that he's going to step down voluntarily and that he's approving |
| 1:33.9 | a transition to a new government of some sort. |
| 1:37.8 | And he seems to be resisting this. |
| 1:41.6 | I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the LawFair podcast November 18th, 2017. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

