Алистер Смит - The Dictator's Handbook - Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

Imagine that the Israeli government spent as much as 10 percent of its revenue on private rewards, probably a high estimate. Imagine that the Egyptian government spent 30 percent of its revenue on private rewards; that is, more than the Israelis as befits the comparison of large- and small-coalition regimes that we have seen in the earlier chapters. Then how valuable did winning have to be for Israel’s coalition and for Egypt’s coalition to justify trying so hard that it meant spending extra money on the war effort?

Anticipating the high risk of war, the usually fractious Israelis formed a unity government in May 1967, reflecting the national commitment to win the coming war. We know the government allocated $381 million to the military in 1967. That means, given our assumptions, that $38 million of that pot of money might have been available for private rewards to the government’s winning coalition. Of course, even more would have been available across the whole economy (both in Egypt and in Israel) but we focus just on money committed to the military in 1967, thereby understating our case. Being a unity government it is likely that the Israeli winning coalition was very large, but we will err on the side of conservatism and assume that the government needed just 25 percent of the population to sustain it. That puts the winning coalition’s size at roughly 650,000 people. With these numbers in mind, we see that the potential value of private rewards taken from the military budget for government supporters in Israel would have been less than $60 a head ($381 million in military expenditures x 10 percent for private rewards/650,000 coalition members = $58.62 per coalition member).

Each member of Israel’s coalition could have had a choice: take the private reward or agree to put that money toward the war effort. Putting it toward the war effort would certainly have increased the odds of victory, an attractive public good to offset the small private gain that would be sacrificed by each individual in the coalition. Surely each of the relevant 650,000 Israelis would have put a greater value on military victory than a paltry $58.62!

Compare this calculation to that for Egyptians in Nasser’s winning coalition. We did a pilot study a few years ago in which we surveyed country experts about the size of several governments’ winning coalitions from 1955 to 2008. The experts we interviewed about Egypt placed its winning coalition as being as small as 8 members and as many as 65 in 1967. Wherever one comes down in that range it is obvious that the coalition was very small. We suspect the experts may have underestimated its size so we will err, again, on the side of conservatism and assume it was as many as 1,000 key military officers and essential senior civil servants. Even with our conservative estimate, each coalition member stood to get $150,000 in private rewards ($500 million in military expenditures x 30 percent for private rewards/ 1,000 coalition members = $150,000 per coalition member) if the funds out of the military budget that were available for that use were turned over to them instead of being applied to making a concerted increased effort to win the war. Whereas Israeli coalition members were only asked to sacrifice about $60 to help their country win the war, Egypt’s coalition members would have had to personally give up $150,000 in income to help their country win. It should be obvious that Nasser would likely have lost the loyal support of lots of his key backers if he took their $150,000 a head and spent it on the war instead of on them. He actually would have increased his chance of being overthrown in a military coup by making an all-out effort to win the war at the expense of his cronies. His backers would have had to place a value on winning the war that was worth their personally giving up $150,000. Victory is nice, but it probably isn’t that nice for many people. Levi Eshkol faced no such problem. His supporters were much more likely to place a value on victory that was greater than $58.62.

Of course, Israel did not just fight Egypt. It took on Syria and Jordan at the same time. Here again the logic for its victory is the same. As Ryszard Kapuscinski describes, Israel simply tried harder.

Why did the Arabs lose the 1967 war? A lot has been said on that subject. You could hear that Israel won because Jews are brave and Arabs are cowards. Jews are intelligent, and Arabs are primitive. The Jews have better weapons, and the Arabs worse. All of it untrue! The Arabs are also intelligent and brave and they have good weapons. The difference lay elsewhere—in the approach to war, in varying theories of war. In Israel, everybody takes part in war, but in the Arab countries—only the army. When war breaks out, everyone in Israel goes to the front and civilian life dies out. While in Syria, many people did not find out about the 1967 war until it was over. And yet Syria lost its most important strategic area, the Golan Heights, in that war. Syria was losing the Golan Heights and at the same time, that same day, that same hour, in Damascus—twenty kilometres from the Golan Heights—the cafes were full of people, and others were walking around, worrying about whether they would find a free table. Syria lost fewer than 100 soldiers in the 1967 war. A year earlier, 200 people had died in Damascus during a palace coup. Twice as many people die because of a political quarrel as because of a war in which the country loses its most important territory and the enemy approaches within shooting distance of the capital.6

Kapuscinki’s numbers are wrong, since about 2,500 Syrians were killed in the war, but his point is not. Autocrats don’t squander precious resources on the battlefield. And elite well-equipped units are more for crushing domestic opposition than they are fighting a determined foreign foe. Syrian president, Hafez al-Assad, did just that. In February 1982, he deployed around 12,000 soldiers to besiege the city of Hama in response to an uprising of a conservative religious group, the Muslim Brotherhood. After three weeks of shelling, the city was destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians were massacred.

When they need to, democracies try hard. However, often they don’t need to. Indeed they are notorious for being bullies and picking on weaker states, and negotiating whenever they are confronted by a worthy adversary. Thus the United States readily fights small adversaries like Grenada, Panama, and the Dominican Republic, and many democracies expanded their influence in the world by colonizing the weak. But when it came to the Soviet Union, the United States and its democratic, NATO allies negotiated whether the dispute was over Cuba, issues in Europe, or elsewhere in the world. Indeed, the cold war stayed cold precisely because the United States, a large-coalition regime, even with enormous effort, could not be confident of victory. When extra effort does make victory likely, as in the Iraqi surge, democrats try hard.

Unfortunately, sometimes negotiations fail, as was the case when Britain and France sought to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II. They agreed to Germany occupying Austria and the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia. Even when he invaded Poland, some in Britain hesitated to declare war. No concession, however, was sufficient to satisfy Hitler’s appetite for Lebensraum. This left Britain and France with a very serious fight on their hands, and one in which Britain tried enormously hard. In contrast, Germany did not switch its economy onto a full war footing until the later stages of the war when it was clear to Hitler and his cronies that their government’s survival—and their personal survival—was at risk.

In other cases the fight turns out to be significantly more difficult than initially thought. US involvement in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan would be just such cases. When confronted by these difficult fights democracies increase their effort. In Vietnam, the United States continually reassessed the resources needed to win before negotiating a settlement with North Vietnam, only to see that agreement collapse a year after American withdrawal. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has needed troop surges to advance its objectives. That is, the United States follows Weinberger’s counsel and not Sun Tzu’s time-tested advice. Autocratic leaders are wary of expending resources on the war effort, even if victory demands it. They know their fate depends more upon the loyalty of their coalition than success on the battlefield. They don’t generally make that extra effort.