How likely is the overthrow of Burma's military junta? This old paper (pdf) by Timur Kuran gives us reason for hope.
It lies in the notion of preference falsification. Imagine you're a junior officer in the Burmese army, with orders to suppress the demonstrations, but you privately think it wrong to do so. Do you disobey the orders?
It depends upon what you think fellow soldiers will do. If you think they'll turn against you, you'll keep quiet and obey orders, falsifying your preference. But if you have a hunch they'll back you, you might disobey, figuring that the miltary top-brass can't kill all of you; the costs to you of disobeying (the risk of death) are then smaller than the cost of obeying, living with a bad conscience.
In this context, apparently strong regimes can be fragile. It might be that everyone obeys orders because each believes that others believe the regime is legitimate, even though everyone believes privately the regime to be wrong.
In such circumstances, a tiny signal can trigger revolution, because it signals to all that everyone else thinks what they think. Mass obedience can then shift immediately to mass disobedience - a tipping point is reached.
A great example of this was the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. When one man started to boo him, others realised that people thought like them. Having suppressed their true beliefs for fear that they'd be isolated and therefore punished, they realized they could disobey, and booed too. Ceausescu was dead in days.
In this context, the psychological warfare of the Buddhist monks, in refusing alms from soldiers, could be very powerful. What it does is increase the costs to believers of obeying the regime. At the margin, this might tempt just one or two to risk disobedience. And if that signals to others that their private opposition to the regime is widely shared, revolution is possible.
E, pelos vistos, parece que a revolta do exército já começou.
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