In 1789, the king of France was in an enviable position when he had to deal with activists who had taken the Bastille. He was well connected, as the husband of Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the emperor of Austria who could, and did, mobilize the “international community” to stifle the dangerous activism. Unless stopped, it might actually have toppled every throne in Europe. England’s help to the crowned heads proved invaluable.
No word has, as yet, been coined to describe the current activism in North Africa and the Middle East. Whatever history will call it, it has elements of revolution. In dramatic contrast to 1789, this time the “international community” is on the side of the revolutionaries. It is no longer prepared to tolerate what until recently was a matter of course – that rulers would use force to suppress popular aspirations designed to curtail their powers. Loathsome dictators were tolerable, especially if it was profitable to deal with them, but today they are no longer tolerable if they massacre their own people. There would have been no coalition to enforce a no-fly zone if there was no general sympathy for the activists.
In 1917, the “international community” had no sympathy with activists in St. Petersburg who used force against their rulers. Their purpose was not only to take power at home but also eventually to encourage their fellow activists in other countries to do the same.
The “international community” took action. By the end of 1918 there were more than 180,000 foreign troops on Russian soil, and several White Russian armies were receiving allied money and allied guns; i.e., they intervened directly in a civil war. Churchill was strongly in favour. Canadians were heavily involved, supplying troops for the Siberian expedition and for Murmansk. There was talk of a crusade against Bolshevism.
The reason why so little of this is known today is that the intervention was as ineffectual in 1918–1920 as a similar one had been in 1789.
But this time the intervention is on the other side – on the side of the activists.
It is likely to be effective.
Source: Paris in 1919, by Margaret Macmillan
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
It is still a radical and dangerous step to send arms and troops into a foreign country on behalf of or on the side of the ‘revolutionaries’ – especially when one is not very sure what those people actually want to do.