The Dictator's Handbook (41 page)

Democracies don't fight with each other, true. Rather, big democracies pick on little opponents whether they are democratic or not, with the expectation that they won't fight back or won't put up much of a fight. Indeed, that could very well be viewed as a straightforward explanation of the history of democracies engaged in imperial and colonial expansion against weak adversaries with little hope of defending themselves.

This democratic propensity to pick on weak foes is nothing new. Looking at all wars for nearly the past two centuries, we know that about 93 percent of wars started by democratic states are won by them. In contrast, only about 60 percent of wars started by nondemocracies are won by them.
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In his 1994 State of the Union address, US president Bill Clinton declared “democracies don't attack each other,” and therefore “the best
strategy to insure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.” This is a common theme for US presidents. Unfortunately, actions have not matched the rhetoric. More unfortunately still, the problem lies not in a failure on the presidential level, but with “we, the people.”

In democracies, leaders who fail to deliver the policies their constituents want get deposed. Democrats might say they care about the rights of people overseas to determine their own future, and they might actually care too, but if they want to keep their jobs they will deliver the policies that
their people
want. Earlier we examined how democrats use foreign aid to buy policy. If that fails, or gets too expensive, then force is always an option. Military victory allows the victors to impose policy.

We should dismiss any pretense that such policies are paternal and imposed with the foreigners' long-term best interests in mind. They are not. They are done for the benefit of the democrat's supporters and sometimes these policies can be very unpleasant. For instance, the opium wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) got their name because the British wanted to finance their purchases of Chinese exports by selling the Chinese opium grown in India. China was reluctant to become a nation of addicts. The British used force to open up China to the drugs market. Hong Kong started out as a base from which the British could enforce this trade openness. It is telling that, while the settlements that ended the wars are officially known as the Treaties of Nanking and Tianjin, the Chinese often refer to them as the Unequal Treaties.

One of the problems with seeking a policy solution is that after the democrat's army leaves, the vanquished nation can renege. Enforcing the settlement can be very expensive, as was the case after the Gulf War. A common solution, and the one eventually used against Saddam Hussein, is leader replacement. Democrats remove foreign leaders who are troublesome to them and replace them with puppets. The leaders that rise to the top after an invasion are more often than not handpicked by the victor.

A difficult leader whom democrats don't trust to honor an agreement will often find himself replaced. The Congo's Patrice Lumumba, democratically elected, didn't have policies that pleased the Belgian or
American governments and before you knew it, Lumumba was dead, replaced by horrible successors who also happened to be prepared to toe the line favored by the United States and Belgium. France has been no different, stepping into its ex-colony of Chad to make sure that a French-friendly government is in charge rather a Libyan-friendly or Arab-friendly regime.

Democratic leaders profess a desire for democratization. Yet the reality is that it is rarely in their interest. As the coalition size grows in a foreign nation, its leader becomes more and more compelled to enact policies that his people want and not the policies desired by the puppeteer's people. If a democratic leader wants a foreign leader to follow his prescribed policies then he needs to insulate his puppet from domestic pressures. This means reducing coalition size in vanquished states. This makes it cheaper and easier to sustain puppets and buy policy. US foreign policy is awash with examples where the United States overtly or covertly undermines the development of democracy because it promoted the policies counter to US interests. Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii in 1893, Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran in 1953, and Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 all suffered such fates.

Democracy overseas is a nice thing to believe in, in the abstract. In practice it's probably not what we, the people want. Let's return to reconsider Egypt and Israel and the case for democratization. Western democracies used to complain, albeit not too emphatically, about electoral malpractice in Egypt under Mubarak. With Mubarak gone, they now worry that true democracy in Egypt might be contrary to the interests of friends of Israel. Buying peace with Israel under Mubarak was costly but moves toward democracy in Egypt will make continued peace costlier at least until and if Egypt becomes a full-fledged, mature democracy whose leaders will then only fight if they are virtually sure of victory. We can hope that in the long run a democratized Egypt and democratic Israel might develop mutual trust, understanding, and tolerance. However, there is also a chance that Israel would not survive long enough to reach this long run.

While it is true that democracies generally don't fight each other, we have also noted that they do have lopsided conflicts, and those
conflicts often end with the weaker side capitulating. If a democratic Egypt mobilizes and arms itself, tiny Israel would have little hope of resisting unless the United States or NATO were prepared to make a large effort to defend it. Anyone who thinks a democratic Egypt attacking Israel is too fanciful a scenario might ask democratic Native American tribes from the American plains about their dealings with the expanding United States in the 1800s. Democratization sounds good in principle only.

Of course, many may think that we are just too cynical. Advocates of democratization are fond of pointing out the success stories. Yet all of these cases—Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—also happen to involve countries whose population's values largely coincide with American values in resisting for decades large communist neighbors.

The big problem with democratizing overseas continues to lie with we, the people. In most cases we seem to prefer that foreign nations do what we want, not what they want. However, if our interests align then successful democratization is more likely. This is particularly so if there is a rival power that wishes to influence policy. The postwar success stories fit this category well. Generally, the people of West Germany and Japan preferred what the United States wanted to the vision expounded by the Soviet Union. Creating powerful states that wanted to resist communism and would try hard was in the US interest. As occupying powers, the United States, Britain, and France might have set Germany on a course to democracy but they did so only because it was advantageous for them. This confluence of interests is rare, and so is externally imposed democratization.

Sun Tzu exerted a lasting influence on the study of war precisely because his recommendations are the right recommendations for leaders, like monarchs and autocrats, who rule based on a small coalition. The Weinberger Doctrine—like its more recent replacement, the Powell Doctrine—exerts influence over American security policy precisely because it recommends the most appropriate actions for leaders who are beholden to a large coalition.

We have seen that larger coalition systems are extremely selective in their decisions about waging war and smaller coalition systems are not. Democracies only fight when negotiation proves unfruitful and the democrat's military advantage is overwhelming, or when, without fighting, the democrat's chances of political survival are slim to none. Furthermore, when war becomes necessary, large-coalition regimes make an extra effort to win if the fight proves difficult. Small-coalition leaders do not if doing so uses up so much treasure that would be better spent on private rewards that keep their cronies loyal. And finally, when a war is over, larger coalition leaders make more effort to enforce the peace and the policy gains they sought through occupation or the imposition of a puppet regime. Small-coalition leaders mostly take the valuable private goods for which they fought and go home, or take over the territory they conquered so as to enjoy the economic fruits of their victory for a long time.

Clausewitz had war right. War, it seems, truly is just domestic politics as usual. For all the philosophical talk of “a just war,” and all the strategizing about balances of power and national interests, in the end, war, like all politics, is about staying in power and controlling as many resources as possible. It is precisely this predictability and normality of war that makes it, like all the pathologies of politics we have discussed, susceptible to being understood and fixed.

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.

 

 

 

 

I
N LATE 1901, VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN WROTE A revolutionary essay called “What is to be Done?” His question was directed at justifying the creation of the communist party as the vanguard of the people. We are more interested in his literal question than in his reason for asking it and, equally, we are intrigued by his unintended answer three years later (really in a different context, but nevertheless, apt) in the title to another essay, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.” Too often, the real world of politics and business responds to problems by taking one step forward and two steps back, resulting in no progress on the problem at hand. Backsliding is, and should be, the way leaders deal with problems. It is the existing rules that have allowed them to seize and control resources to date. A headlong plunge into new ways of conducting politics might only heighten a leader's risk of being overthrown.

After the past nine chapters of our cynical—but we fear, accurate—portrayal of politics, it is time at last to more seriously confront Lenin's
first question: What is to be done? We hope that, informed by the lessons of leadership, we can offer a much better and more democratic answer than he provided.

It is an understatement to say that making the world better is a difficult task. If it were not, then it would already have been improved. The misery in which so many live would already have been overcome. The enrichment of CEOs while their stockholders lose their shirts would be a thing of the past. However, the inherent problem with change is that improving life for one group generally means making at least one other person worse off, and that other person is likely to be a leader if change really will solve the people's problems. If the individual harmed by change is the ruler or the CEO—the same person who has to initiate the changes in the first place—then we can be confident that change is never going to happen.

From the beginning we said we would focus on what
is
rather than what
ought
to be. Now we need to talk a bit about what ought to be. In doing so, we want to lay down the ground rules. First among these is that we should never let the quest for perfection block the way to lesser improvement. Utopian dreams of a perfect world are just that: utopian. Pursuing the perfect world for everyone is a waste of time and an excuse for not doing the hard work of making the world better for many.

It is impossible to make the world great for everyone. Everyone doesn't want the same thing. Think about what is good for interchangeables, influentials, and essentials, the three dimensions of political life: hardly ever is it true that what is good for leaders and their essential backers is good for everyone else. If they all had the same wants there wouldn't be misery in the world. So, even as we are trying to change the world for the better, we are tied to the dictates of political reality. A fix is not a fix unless it can actually be done! What can be done must satisfy the needs of everyone required to implement change. Wishful thinking is not a fix and a perfect solution is not our goal and should not be any well-intentioned person's goal. Even minor improvements in governance can result in significant improvements in the welfare of potentially millions of people or shareholders.

Whether we are looking at the welfare of shareholders in publicly traded corporations, the quality of life for citizens in a democracy or the conditions under which billions live in oppressive and impoverished third-world countries, there are certain common principles behind bettering the world. These commonalities need to be laid bare before we tackle the specifics of fixing particular problems in particular places.

If we have learned anything in the preceding pages it is to be suspicious of people's motives. Appeals to ideological principles and rights are generally a cover. J. P. Morgan had it right: There is always some principled way to defend any position, especially one's own interests. In one overseas nation, our government supports protest and advocates the will of the people to determine their own future. That is, for instance, a popular refrain for leaders in the United States when it comes to places like Hugo Chavez's Venezuela or Kim Jong Il's North Korea. Elsewhere we call for stability. That's the principle invoked when people try to bring down a government that is our friend and ally, such as the governments of Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. Both freedom and stability are principled positions (the good reason) selectively asserted depending upon how we like the incumbent (the real reason). In devising fixes to the world's ills, the essential first step is to understand what the protagonists want and how different policies and changes will affect their welfare. A reformer who takes what people say at face value will quickly find their reforms at a dead end.