Is there a modern historical precedent for a government being overthrown due to the unpopularity of a war it was fighting?

by Ed_Sullivision

Obviously this question is aimed at the Russo-Ukrainian war. The war seems to be very unpopular amongst the Russian public, and I continue to see stories in the news such as this.

Is there any historical roadmap for a coup/revolution based on a nation being sick and tired of being involved in a foreign war?

HuskyCriminologist

I guess it depends on how you define "modern" and "overthrown." Which isn't helpful by itself so please permit me to elaborate. For the purposes of this post I'm going to define "modern" as post-1900, and "overthrown" as meaning "to change the government in power," conspicuously leaving out violence as a necessary element for reasons that will become clear later.

Working from these definitions, the answer to your question is yes! Some of which are famous!

Most notoriously, and most relevantly to your question, is the overthrow of Tsarist Russia. While the Tsarist regime had been teetering on the brink of collapse for some time now, it can be truthfully said that World War One was at the very least the catalyst for the Russian Revolution. While we can (and should) argue about Trotsky's legacy and honesty, he did write a book titled History of the Russian Revolution in which he talks about how the revolution came to be. Quoting:

Von Struve ... better defined the actual sources of the revolution, although in the language of reactionary hatred. "Insofar as the popular, and especially the soldier, masses took part in the revolution, it was not a patriotic explosion, but a riotous self-demobilization, and was directed straight against a prolongation of the war. That is, it was made in order to stop the war." [Emphasis added.]

There were a multitude of other causes of the Revolution of course, among them "dire urban working conditions" and "labor strife" that led to a series of massacres. Additionally, Tsar Nicholas was beginning the process of rolling back some of the democratic reforms he'd begun after the failed 1905 Revolution. Quoting from Patrick J. Kiger's article on History.com. Still though, all of the stress fractures in the Tsarist regime were amplified by the war, which undoubtedly hastened their fall.

Now, switching gears, France! La Belle France collapsed after an unpopular foreign war. Namely, Indochina. France in post-World War Two was, to put it kindly, in the shitter. The Fourth Republic was laid down in 1947, and it only lasted until 1958. In between those years was the near-total collapse of the French Colonial Empire, which was hardly bloodless. The worst of these colonial wars was Indochina. France was brutalized in Indochina. Over the course of an agonizing seven-year conflict, France lost some 20,000 French troops and around 50,000 French-Colonial troops. Dead. Not wounded, not missing, not captured, dead. To put this in perspective, this was around 1/3 (added together) what they'd already lost in World War Two. This drum-beat of losses was the death knell of the 4th Republic. It limped on for another few years (The French-Indochina War ended in 1954), until another bout of de-colonization conflict, The Algerian War of Independence, finally put an end to things. There was a military coup, and it took General de Gaulle's considerable influence to establish the 5th Republic. The new constitution was approved by referendum, in which a staggering 84.9% voted in favor. Citing The Modern Law Review, Vol. 22, Jan. 1959.

I could argue that the American involvement in Vietnam directly caused the peaceful "overthrow" of Johnson's government, but I think that once we start getting into peaceful transitions of power in functioning democratic countries we start wandering further afield from the grounds of your question.