My Arab April Spring Scorecard

Losses:

Syria’s Assad remains in power despite (thanks to?) brutal suppression. The modest sanctions imposed on his regime will make no difference. Despite Assad’s close alliance with Iran, the political assassinations in Lebanon, and support of Hezbollah, the strange argument still prevails that we would be worse off without the “potential reformer” Assad.

Bad Mistakes:

The Egyptian military’s decision to try Mubarak and the international court indictment of Kaddafi send the message that dictators should hold on to power until their last breath. There is no such thing as a graceful exit. Yemen’s President Saleh got the message and is now refusing to resign. Kaddafi and sons have received the message as well.

Unlikely Wins:

Egypt’s military understands that real democracy can cost it its control of Egypt’s economy and wealth. It will not allow liberal democratic forces time to form real political parties. Egypt’s military will remain in control perhaps in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood. They will increasingly suppress true democratic reformers in subtle but effective ways.

Possible Wins:

Even uncoordinated and weak support from NATO is preventing a defeat of rebel forces by Kaddafi loyalists. As hostilities drag on, a missile is likely to get Kaddafi. Until that happens, there will be a protracted civil war in Libya. If Kaddafi is not killed, NATO countries will lose the will to fight and Kaddafi survives.

“Kill Qadaffi” (Plus Other Thoughts)

Despite protestations that we are not after regime change, the allied bombing makes no sense unless this is our goal. Our stated objective is to reduce civilian casualties, but if Qadaffi remains in power, the loss of civilian lives will be huge as he wreaks his revenge on anyone he suspects of disloyalty or even wavering. Civilian losses near the battlefield will be trivial compared to a surviving Qadaffi’s political repressions. We can only protect civilian lives by getting rid of him. I suspect everyone understands this but cannot speak the words “Kill Qadaffi!”.

A second thought: I wonder how the American public’s stomach will hold up when Qadaffi starts displaying civilian casualties. If there are none, he can always create some. The media’s sympathies are against Qadaffi, but they will not be able to ignore the story when he piles up the bodies and women and children. These grisly displays will run counter to the French, British and U.S. militaries’ descriptions of antiseptic surgical strikes. The outrage of antiwar groups in the U.S. and Europe, who do not like cost-benefit analysis of casualties, will rise to the boiling point.

I must confess that I am puzzled by China’s and Russia’s abstentions at the U.N. Security Council. Their votes might be less puzzling if Qadaffi were clearly on his way out, but the outcome is up for grabs. Russia is remarkably consistent; Putin gains from stirring the pot of unrest. Uncertainty raises oil prices, which he desperately needs to repair his state finances. Russia likes to side against the U.S. in just about any and all matters. China’s abstention is even more puzzling. China is consistent in opposing any outside intervention to strike at political oppression. They understand that attention could turn to them at some point.

If Qadaffi survives the first week of bombardments and turns this into a protracted civil war, he can win. Russia and China will raise their level of criticism. Anti-war sentiment will rise as civilian casualties mount. Qadaffi can move beyond the immediate emergency to the slaughter of opponents in areas he controls.

Kaddafi and His Ilk Are Not Crazy: Are Dictators Predictable?

As Kaddafi machine guns demonstrators, we are told these are acts of an insane man. We must be careful what we say or do because the criminally insane are erratic and unpredictable. Using such logic, the U.S. was among the last to call for his ouster. Examples of insanity are his public rants, the ordering of the bombing of Pan Am 103 (for which he thought he would never be caught), the ludicrous philosophizing in his Green book, the pitching of his tent in New Jersey, and his refusal to ride elevators. Other dictators are pictured in the same way: Iran’s ruling mullahs are religious fanatics; Stalin was a psychotic paranoid.

Insanity is the easiest explanation of dictatorial atrocities for Western minds to fathom. That “criminally insane” dictators follow a common pattern, transcending time and place, argues however that they share a common goal and use the same instruments and practices to achieve it. Just as we can explain business behavior through the profit motive, so can we understand and even predict dictatorial behavior by analyzing how they generate and use political power. If their actions consistently promote the paramount goal of power, their actions are completely “rational,” no matter how morally repugnant or obscene. Rational behavior can be analyzed; insane behavior cannot.

None of these dictators was offered power on a silver platter. They “had to earn it” as a famous brokerage house commercial used to say. Kaddafi gained power as a young military officer by skillfully outmaneuvering rivals and manipulating one tribe against another. Iran’s ruling mullahs won a fierce and bloody power struggle in which a large number of the ruling elite were assassinated. Stalin was the victor in one of the bloodiest succession struggles in history against better know and seemingly superior rivals. Kaddafi, Iran’s ruling mullahs, and Stalin won because they were better at accumulating and using power than their rivals. These were not accidental victories. They held on to power by skillfully playing one rival against the other and using ideology, propaganda, patronage, and religion to their advantage.

There is a growing theoretical literature that provides systematic insights into the behavior of dictators. It assumes, quite unobjectionably, that dictators aim to accumulate sufficient political power to hold on to power. They “produce” power by combining loyalty and repression (the carrot and the stick). They keep the secret police or army in check by appointing relatives or incriminated associates as its head and by removing intermediate links between operatives and the dictator. Some results are non-intuitive, such as the greater stability of dictatorships (due to the incumbent’s immense advantages) and the fact that a rational dictator will kill innocent people (a practice often used as proof of insanity).

Democratic rulers must offer platforms that please the median voter, thus the scramble to the middle in elections. Dictators can offer their platform and then “eliminate” (by jail, execution, disenfranchisement, or exile) those who disagree with it.

Public demonstrations reflect general disaffection with the dictator’s “platform.” The dictator can respond by “reforms” that move his platform closer to the public’s, by ramping up repression, or by a combination of the two. In general, public demonstrations threaten to weaken the dictator’s power below the threshold necessary to stay in power. The dictator must do something to prevent this from happening.

The response of “constrained” (Mubarak) and “unconstrained” (Iran and Kaddafi) rulers has been strikingly different in the Middle East. The former have unsuccessfully used limited repression, concessions and material rewards in a vain effort to boost their political power. The morally-unconstrained have used as much repression as necessary while offering targeted material incentives (such as increased army pay and according to recent reports handing out cash). This strategy will likely work in Iran but fail in Libya.

For unconstrained dictators such as Kaddafi, there are eventually diminishing returns to repression. At some point, more and more segments of the population understand that they themselves are at risk and withdraw their loyalty. As the loyalty of the neutral or even loyal population collapses, the regime falls below the threshold necessary to stay in power and the dictator is overthrown. This is Kaddafi’s likely impending fate.

Notes: Research conducted in the Hoover Institution Soviet State and Party Archives over the past decade has aimed at applying the theory of dictatorship to the Stalin period. For those interested in our results, see: Paul Gregory, Terror by Quota (Yale –Hoover, 2009), Paul Gregory and Norman Naimark (eds.), The Lost Politburo Transcripts (Yale-Hoover, 2008), Paul Gregory and Valery Lazarev eds., The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (Hoover, 2003); and Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev, Funding Loyalty (Yale-Hoover, forthcoming). The theory of dictatorship has been developed, among others, by Ronald Wintrobe, Bruce Bueno de la Mesquita, James Robinson and Daron Ademoglu.