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

The conduct of the First Gulf War also fits the patterns predicted by a political survival outlook. The United States first tried negotiations to get Iraqi forces to leave. When these failed, the United States assembled an overwhelmingly powerful coalition of highly trained and superbly equipped troops. Saddam Hussein had elite troops, such as the Republican Guard, that perhaps came close to matching the training and capability of coalition forces. But his elite Republican Guard did not confront the coalition forces; Saddam had them pulled back to safety so they could protect him rather than protect Iraq. Instead the brunt of the coalition attack was borne by raw recruits and poorly equipped units. As the casualty figures show, many of these units suffered horribly.

Facing the possibility that coalition forces would invade Baghdad to depose him, on February 28 Saddam Hussein agreed to terms of surrender. The United States retained forces in the Gulf to ensure Saddam complied with the terms to which he had agreed. Yet no-fly exclusion zones, diplomatic isolation, and economic sanctions did not stop Saddam from repeatedly reneging on the agreement he accepted. He also survived domestically. After his military defeat, several groups, including Shiites in the South and Kurds in the North, rebelled. Unfortunately for them, Saddam had preserved his best troops and retained enough resources to buy their continued loyalty. The suppression of these uprisings killed tens of thousands and led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of others. Saddam would subsequently remain in power until the United States deposed him in the Second Gulf War in 2003.

Saddam was not alone in placing survival and enrichment over fighting well. Dictators would like to win wars if they can secure control over extra riches that way, but keeping their job takes priority over pursuing those riches. Mengistu Haile Mariam, who came to power in 1974 when he overthrew Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, embraced communism and was handsomely rewarded by the Soviet Union. Over a fourteen-year period the USSR gave his regime about $9 billion, much of it as military aid with which to fight Eritrean rebel forces seeking independence. Despite all this money, his war against the Eritreans did not go well. It seems Mengistu was more interested in the Soviet money as a means to enrich himself and ensure his political survival than in the successful conduct of the war. He certainly had little concern for his soldiers’ welfare, as we shall see later. Michela Wrong, for instance, reports that the Soviets eventually worked out that Mengistu’s devotion to the fight was not all it was cracked up to be: “‘He kept telling us that if we helped him he could achieve this military victory,’ remembers Adamishin, with bitterness. ‘I remember how he told me with tears in his eyes: “We may have to sell our last shirt, but we will pay you back. We Ethiopians are a proud people, we settle our debts.” Looking back, I almost feel I hate him. Because I believed that what mattered to him was what was best for the country. While really all that mattered to him was his own survival.’”10

Unfortunately for Mengistu Haile Miriam, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the end of his gravy train. In 1989 the Soviets departed. Mengistu needed a new source of money. In an effort to salvage his situation, he decided to try to get blood money from the United States and Israel by offering to trade Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) for money and military aid. The Falashas dated back in North Africa for thousands of years and are counted among those who fled from the Babylonian captivity in 586 BCE. To resettle these people, the United States allegedly paid $20 million and Israel agreed to pay $58 million (but eventually only paid $35 million). With the money transferred, the rescued Falashas were then settled in Israel.11 This blood money was not enough to buy the loyalty of his supporters. It was a far cry from the annual amounts doled out by the Soviets. As his military collapsed to the much weaker Eritrean forces, Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe, where he lives in luxury with around fifty former colleagues and family members.

Who Survives War

Democrats are much more sensitive to war outcomes than autocrats.12 Indeed, even victory in war does not guarantee a democrat’s political survival. For instance, within eighteen months of defeating Saddam Hussein, and the over 80 percent approval ratings that went with it, President George Herbert Walker Bush was defeated at the polls by Bill Clinton in 1992. Similarly, British voters threw Winston Churchill out of office despite his inspired leadership during World War II. Still, while it is no guarantee of political survival, military victory clearly helps. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher turned her career around with the defeat of Argentina in the Falklands war in 1982. Her economic reforms and confrontations with trade unions had led to recession and high unemployment. Prior to the war she was deeply unpopular. At the end of 1981 her approval rating stood at 25 percent. After the war this jumped to over 50 percent, and a year later she won a decisive electoral victory that would have looked virtually impossible eighteen months earlier.

Military success helps democrats retain power while defeat makes removal a near certainty for democrats. A failure to achieve victory in Vietnam ended US president Johnson’s career. French premier Joseph Laniel suffered a similar fate. His government collapsed following the French defeat by Vietnamese forces in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. British prime minister Anthony Eden was forced to resign after his disastrous invasion of Egypt’s Suez Canal Zone in 1956.

Autocrats are much less sensitive to defeat. Despite defeat in the First Gulf War and a costly and inconclusive result in the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), Saddam Hussein outlasted four US presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton). Only defeat in the Second Gulf War cost him his job, and that war was fought primarily to remove him. Unless they are defeated by a democracy seeking policy concessions, autocrats can generally survive military defeat provided that they preserve their resources. Autocrats even survive if their loss involves huge causalities. In contrast, even in victory democrats are liable to be deposed if they get lots of soldiers killed in the process. That presumably is why democrats do much more to protect soldiers than autocrats do.

Hermann Goring, Hitler’s number two in the Nazi German regime, knew that, while it is the people who do the fighting, it is leaders who start wars.

Naturally the common people don’t want war. . . . But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.13

Goring is right. Leaders of every flavor can deploy troops and the people in democracies are liable to rally around the flag. But democrats don’t recklessly put soldiers in harm’s way. And when they do, they do much more to protect them. The value of a soldier’s life differs drastically between small- and large-coalition systems. To illustrate this sad truth we compare two conflicts fought a few years apart in the Horn of Africa.

The US military operates on the principle of no soldier left behind. For an accurate and gory drama of this principle, we recommend Ridley Scott’s 2001 film, Black Hawk Down, which portrays an account of the battle of Mogadishu, October 3–4, 1993. US troops entered Somalia as part of a United Nations–sponsored humanitarian mission. In 1993 Somalia was a collapsed state. Between 1969 and 1991 it had been ruled by Siad Barre, someone who understood that policy should always be subordinate to survival. As the real-life Barre bluntly stated, “I believe neither in Islam, nor socialism nor tribalism, nor Somali nationalism, nor pan-Africanism. The ideology to which I am committed is the ideology of political survival.”14 And this focus allowed him to successfully survive in office for twenty-two years before being caught up and deposed in the myriad of civil wars that plague the Horn of Africa. Following his deposition, the Somali state collapsed, with control divided between tribal warlords whose militia terrorized the people. Mohamed Farrah Aideed, who led the Habar Gidir clan, controlled one of the strongest factions. Aideed was strongly opposed to the United States’s presence in Somalia because he believed the United States was backing his adversaries. After several failed attempts to capture or kill Aideed, the United States received intelligence that several of his senior colleagues were meeting at a house. The US plan was to helicopter elite troops into the building, capture the senior Habar Gidir members, and get out via a military convoy.