How This Ends: What Ten Revolutions Teach Trump's America
The fall comes slowly, and then faster than anyone expected. A European's reading of where America stands today.
This is the tenth and final part of The Fall. It is time to answer the question those Americans asked on a Portuguese trail in March 2026, the question that started this series: how does this end?
I have spent nine installments looking at how authoritarian regimes have ended elsewhere. Portugal 1974. The Philippines 1986. East Germany and Czechoslovakia 1989. Romania 1989. Chile 1988. South Korea 2016. Ukraine, twice. Each case was different. Each had its own combination of triggers, its own turning point, its own morning after. But across all of them, patterns emerged that are clear enough to apply to America in 2026 — carefully and honestly.
Here is what the historical record shows.
The five triggers, revisited
In Part 1, I identified five triggers that the political science literature on regime collapse has found most consistently significant. Economic crisis. Elite fracture. Mass mobilization. Military defection. International pressure. No single trigger is usually sufficient. Regimes fall when several converge. The literature suggests that when several of these triggers align at once, regimes become far more vulnerable — though history offers patterns, not guarantees.
Where does America stand against each of them today?
Economic anxiety is real and intensifying. The consequences of the Iran war at the gas pump, the disruption of trade relationships built over decades, the market volatility that has reached into retirement accounts that millions of older Americans depend on: none of this has yet produced the kind of crisis that broke Romania’s social contract or destabilized Weimar Germany. But the middle-class expectation of stability — the foundation of any regime’s legitimacy — is under sustained pressure. This trigger is not fully activated. It is moving.
Elite fracture has begun, and the midterm elections are the next significant test. The pattern across every case in this series is consistent: members of a ruling coalition break when they calculate that the cost of loyalty exceeds the cost of defection. That calculation is a function of pressure from below and of perceived risk to their own futures. Some Republican politicians and business figures who initially accommodated the administration are recalculating. The fracture is early and partial. But it is visible, and historical precedent suggests it accelerates as other triggers intensify.
This is the final installment of The Fall — a ten-part series examining how authoritarian regimes have ended, from Portugal 1974 to South Korea 2016. If you subscribe now, you can read the complete series in the archive, and you will be in time for the next series, The Strongman’s Playbook, which starts next week. It examines how authoritarian leaders consolidate power in the first place — the techniques, the patterns, the playbook that shows up across different countries and different eras. The other half of the story.
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Mass mobilization is underway and sustained. The No Kings protests have been geographically widespread and have continued longer than most comparable movements in recent American history. Chenoweth’s work suggests that sustained, nonviolent mobilization can become decisive, but the 3.5% figure she identifies is best understood as a descriptive benchmark from the historical record, not a rule that guarantees success. The American movement has breadth. The question the historical record forces is whether it will develop the depth and discipline that transforms presence into pressure.
Military loyalty remains the most uncertain variable. The administration has worked systematically to install loyalists in senior positions and to remove officers seen as insufficiently committed. The episode I described in Part 1 — in which six senators with military and intelligence backgrounds were investigated for reminding service members that they could refuse illegal orders — reflects a regime that understands this variable and fears it. In every successful transition this series examined, the security apparatus either defected, stood down, or fractured at the decisive moment. Key military figures refused to back Pinochet’s attempt to overturn the referendum. East Germany’s local commander refused to shoot. Romania’s army switched sides. The American military has a formal institutional commitment to constitutional authority. Whether it holds under sustained pressure from above is the question nobody can answer in advance.
International isolation is accelerating in ways that are singular in recent postwar American history. The rupture with Canada, the claim on a NATO ally’s sovereign territory, the withdrawal from international agreements, the trade wars: America’s diplomatic position in 2026 is genuinely unusual. This matters not because foreign governments will remove Trump — they will not — but because international isolation affects the calculations of domestic elites, particularly in the business community, and removes the external anchors that have historically constrained American executive power.
What the cases teach
The cleaner success stories — Portugal, Chile, South Korea — share three characteristics that are worth holding in mind.
First, the opposition organized across its differences rather than fracturing along them. Portugal’s Armed Forces Movement acted together. Chile’s broad opposition coalition united under a single banner and ran a disciplined campaign. South Korea’s protest movement maintained nonviolence and focus week after week for months. In each case, the temptation to splinter was real and was resisted.
Second, the decisive moment came from inside the regime. Portugal’s military officers moved against Caetano from within the armed forces. Key military figures refused to back Pinochet when he tried to annul the result. Lawmakers from Park’s own party supported the impeachment vote that passed overwhelmingly in the National Assembly. Mass mobilization from outside created the conditions. But the crack that ended each regime came from within. This is not a reason for passivity — without the external pressure, the internal crack does not open. It is a reason to understand that the goal of sustained mobilization is not to storm the gates but to change the calculations of people who are already inside them.
Third, the transition was prepared before it arrived. Chile’s No campaign built a parallel vote-counting system before election day. Portugal’s democratic forces had been organizing in exile and underground for years. South Korea’s opposition had a legal framework ready to use. In each case, the morning after the fall did not find the democratic forces unprepared. Ukraine after 2004 and again after 2014 is a warning about incomplete consolidation — about what happens when the revolution clears the ground but the institutional work does not follow.
What Americans can actually do
I am a European. I have spent my career watching democracies under pressure from the outside. I am not going to tell Americans how to organize their politics. That would be both presumptuous and wrong.
But the historical record does suggest some things clearly.
Sustained pressure matters more than peak moments. The Maidan in 2004 produced a historic week. The Maidan in 2014 produced months of escalating pressure that eventually fractured the security apparatus. South Korea’s candlelight protests eventually became massive enough to exert decisive pressure on the political calculations inside the National Assembly. A single large march is a signal. Sustained, organized, disciplined pressure is a force.
The institutional framework still exists and should be used. Chile’s opposition used Pinochet’s own constitution against him. South Korea’s opposition used the impeachment mechanism that the constitution provided. The American constitutional system — damaged but not destroyed — still contains mechanisms: elections, congressional oversight, judicial review, state-level resistance. Using those mechanisms is not capitulation to a rigged system. It is what the historical record shows works.
The question of what comes after deserves as much attention as the question of what comes next. Ukraine’s warning is the most important in this series for Americans thinking beyond the immediate crisis. Removing Trump — through whatever mechanism history provides — does not remove Trumpism. The grievances his movement has channeled, the institutional weaknesses he has exploited, the media ecosystems that sustain his base: none of these disappear when he does. Germany after 1945, Spain after Franco, South Korea after Park: in each case, the real work of democratic consolidation took longer than the transition itself and required more deliberate effort than anyone had anticipated.
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How it ends
The Americans I met on that trail in Portugal asked how this ends. I gave them the beginning of an answer. This series is the rest of it.
History does not guarantee outcomes. The five triggers are in motion in America, but they have not yet converged at the intensity the historical record associates with regime change. That could mean the window closes — that the administration consolidates power before the convergence arrives. Or it could mean the convergence is still building, and what looks like a stalemate is actually the slow accumulation of pressure that precedes a fast collapse.
What history consistently shows is this: regimes that have faced the simultaneous activation of economic anxiety, elite fracture, sustained mass mobilization, contested military loyalty, and international isolation have not remained unchanged. Some fell quickly. Some fell slowly. Some transformed under pressure without formally falling at all. But none stayed the same.
The Romanian crowds that gathered in Timișoara in December 1989 did not know that Ceaușescu would be dead within ten days. The Czechs who took to the streets in November 1989 did not know that Havel would be president within six weeks. The Chileans who voted No in October 1988 did not know that key military figures would refuse to back the emergency decree that night.
They showed up anyway.
That is what the historical record ultimately teaches. Not a guarantee. Not a timetable. Not a plan. A pattern: that sustained, organized, nonviolent pressure on institutions that are already stressed, applied by people who are willing to keep showing up, has ended regimes that looked permanent.
America in 2026 is not Portugal in 1974, or Chile in 1988, or South Korea in 2016. It is its own case, with its own combination of strengths and vulnerabilities, its own political culture, its own history. The parallels this series has drawn are tools for thinking, not predictions.
But the people on that trail asked a real question. And the honest answer, drawn from everything this series has examined, is this: it ends the way these things have always ended. Slowly, and then faster than anyone expected. When enough people decide that it does.
The next series in The Planet will examine how authoritarian leaders consolidate power in the first place — the techniques, the playbook, the patterns that show up across different countries and different eras. Understanding how it is built is the other half of understanding how it falls.
Stay inspired,
Alexander
This is the final installment of The Fall — a ten-part series examining how authoritarian regimes have ended, from Portugal 1974 to South Korea 2016. If you subscribe now, you can read the complete series in the archive, and you will be in time for the next series, The Strongman’s Playbook, which starts next week. It examines how authoritarian leaders consolidate power in the first place — the techniques, the patterns, the playbook that shows up across different countries and different eras. The other half of the story.
If you know an American who is asking the same question those hikers asked on that Portuguese trail, send this to them.New subscribers get 20% off the first year.
More from Alexander Verbeek:
Daybreak Notes & Beans: Every morning before dawn, I search for the best news you didn’t see. Science breakthroughs, conservation wins, human kindness, and beauty — delivered in time for your first coffee. Published most days of the week, positive, and unapologetically hopeful.
More: My digital notebook. You may have seen the Morning Compass, with an overview of the news to get you started, or the Morning Comments, where I give a short talk on video. Occasionally, More also offers follow-ups to stories I didn’t have space to finish, reader questions answered properly, personal moments, and things that don’t fit anywhere else. No fixed format. Published when there’s something worth your time.
Screen Skills: A tech-newsletter for non-tech people. Short, practical digital literacy guides for people who want to use their devices with more confidence. No jargon, no condescension. Usually, I publish it every other working day.
The Curious Wanderer: Travel writing, trail photography, and more personal updates from wherever I happen to be. This one is not like my regular newsletters; here you’ll find the kinds of articles I used to publish only for my small, supportive community on Patreon.
What an extraordinary series The Fall has been. A teacher, a refresher, a warning , a model of how dictatorial regimes collapse. Each case is different and has it’s on circumstances but in sum, they are the same.
America, for the first time in its 250 year history, has joined the ranks of dictatorship. It’s unfamiliar, it’s frightening. The country is still learning how to combat the fascist forces that entered via Trump but with the aid of greedy oligarchs and stealthy provocateurs. Slowly, the realization has set in as the effects become a personal threat to citizens and legislators. That’s when decisions must be made for self protection. Slowly, then fast.
Important takeaway: “A single large march is a signal. Sustained, organized, disciplined pressure is a force.” We’re beginning to get there.
Thank you for this critically important series when America stands at the brink. Your vast experience, knowledge and wisdom are guideposts to a country fighting for its life.
"The episode I described in Part 1 — in which six senators with military and intelligence backgrounds were investigated for reminding service members that they could refuse illegal orders — reflects a regime that understands this variable and fears it."
The number of retired military who have spoken publicly against the regime gives me hope.
"The question the historical record forces is whether it will develop the depth and discipline that transforms presence into pressure."
External and sustained pressure and sustained mass mobilization are our tools. World market reaction is critical.
"Removing Trump — through whatever mechanism history provides — does not remove Trumpism."
A stunning amount of research as well as the vast knowledge you already possess has gone into this exemplary series. Your analysis is invaluable. This country may be an entirely new example of revolution for your archives. We shall see. Next up, elections.