Dr. Jack Goldstone

But sometimes if you call out the military, they say, no, thank you.

We'd rather not defend you.

So, for example, in Tunisia.

Initially, there were small uprisings in the countryside, but when they started to spread to the cities,

the dictator-in-chief, Ben Ali, called out his police.

But the police were kind of overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of people who were protesting in the capital of Tunis.

And so then he called on the military, and the military said, this is really not our problem.

We're here to defend the country against external threats.

And frankly, you and your family have been so corrupt and are so old and are so unpopular that

We don't want to take on the mission of defending you.

And so the military stayed in their barracks and Ben Ali had to run away because there was no one to defend him.

Well, again, we're going into the processes, and I have to say, it's different in different countries.

There's not one single model that all revolutions follow.

As a scientist, it would be really nice if you say, oxygen is oxygen, whether it's on a star a million miles away or whether we're breathing it in today.

It's two atoms of oxygen bounded together in an O2 molecule, and that's how the universe works.

But revolutions are created by the interaction of human beings.

And just like you and I don't even know for sure where our conversation is going to go 20 minutes from now, people are constantly creating options for themselves in the course of a revolution.

So revolutionaries, sometimes they're surprised.

It depends on how many people run away.

how many people are left behind.