ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that intervention may be pressed to four levels, namely: influence, blackmail, displacement and supplantment. In Japan, the army's competition with the parties was accompanied by the murder of prominent politicians. The Japanese example of collusion and competition with civilians may be regarded as influence or blackmail according to taste. A more usual form of political blackmail than the one described is the military threat to refuse to defend the government or to attack it unless its demands are met. In a word, the American governmental system and its tradition of publicity forces the military not only to speak out but to establish relationships with political forces. Military despots also lay claim to the term for their own successful conspiracies, just as it is common experience that the more authoritarian a regime, the more anxious it is to label itself a democracy.
