Some foreign states will act against a dictatorship only to gain their own economic, political, or military control over the country.

That is straight out of Gandhi. If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble. … If you fight with violence, you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon, and you may be a brave but dead hero.

Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police and military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means. Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political "ju-jitsu" and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed.

Violence by the defenders will be used by the putschists to justify overwhelming repression which they want to use anyhow. It will be used to CLAIM that the putschists are saving the country from ‪‎terrorism or ‪#civil war‬, and are preserving "‪law‬ and ‪‎order‬

Nonviolent struggle is the most powerful means available to those struggling for freedom.

Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are.

There should be no romanticism that international public opinion or even international diplomatic and economic pressure can defeat a coup without determined and strong defense by the attacked society itself