How do you get rid of a dictator? Here are some tips
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In an age when dictators and authoritarian regimes are all the rage, it becomes all the more imperative for peace-loving democrats to consider ways of getting rid of them. Yet on some happy – albeit rare – occasions, the more repellent members of the dictatorial species, by dint of incompetence or arrogance, manage to do the job themselves.
The demise of Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu is a case in point. When, on December 21 1989, the self-styled “Genius of the Carpathians” appeared on the balcony of the ruling Communist Party’s headquarters in Bucharest to address tens of thousands of Romanians, he confidently assumed that his speech would inspire the adulation that for 24 years had normally accompanied such events. Instead, owing to the regime’s heavy-handed response to pro-democracy demonstrators in Timișoara a few days earlier, where scores had been shot dead by security forces, the crowd heckled and booed, causing the state-run television station to cut transmission immediately.
Fearing the worst, Nicolae and Elena, his wife of 43 years, ordered a Romanian military helicopter to fly them to safety. But while airborne, they received the news that the government had been toppled, and the military no longer supported them. Upon landing, they were paraded before a show trial, lined up against a wall and gunned to death with a Kalashnikov.
As Marcel Dirsus observes in How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive, the Ceaușescus had only themselves to blame. Nicolae’s overconfidence in his popularity meant he had failed to design any plans for a flight into exile. “By the time it finally dawned on him that this might be his last day in power,” Dirsus concludes, “he could no longer escape.” In many respects, this was a microcosm of the fate that befell the Soviet Union: owing to its incompetence and economic mismanagement, Moscow’s tyranny over swathes of eastern Europe had, within months, collapsed.
But as Dirsus explains in this thought-provoking book, which examines in great detail the numerous ways in which tyrants and their regimes can end in failure, not everyone is so obliging. It required a global war, and an estimated 60 million deaths, to remove Adolf Hitler from Germany, and overthrow his Italian counterpart Benito Mussolini. More recently, an elderly Saddam Hussein might still be overseeing his monstrous regime in Baghdad had it not been for the controversial US-led invasion to remove him from power in 2003. Likewise, Muammar Gaddafi would still be spouting the merits of his Third Universal Theory had it not been for his overthrow following another Western intervention in Libya in 2011.
But there are plenty of other ways in which repressive regimes can be brought to an end. Dirsus, who has made the study of tyrants his speciality since working in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a failed coup in 2013, suggests that many dictators, having achieved ultimate power, find themselves caught on a treadmill whereby they couldn’t renounce that power even if they wanted to. A combination of their own insecurity and deadly rivalries in their inner circle often means that their rule ends in abject failure – even their death. Dirsus cites a recent study in the Journal of Peace Research, which examined the way 2,790 national rulers lost power: it found that a staggering 23 per cent of them ended up exiled or jailed. The percentage rose even higher, to 69 per cent, when it focused purely on those with dictatorial powers, with 69 per cent of such figures jailed, exiled or killed.
The writing in How Tyrants Fall can be glib, and occasionally irrelevant, as when describing how much Boris Johnson now earns from his speaking engagements. But when focused on the task at hand, Dirsus helpfully sets out various scenarios whereby despotic rule can be ushered towards its end. For centuries, the art of assassination has been one popular method. (Benjamin Disraeli’s remark that “assassination has never changed the history of the world” is open to question, when the bloody demise of tyrants such as Hitler and Mussolini often results in the establishment of thriving democratic governments.) Armed insurrections, using militias and mercenary forces, can also be effective, as dictatorships across central Africa and Latin America have found in recent years.
When dealing, though, with tyrannies that are both well-established and well-resourced, such as those currently in power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang, Dirsus concedes that the options for beleaguered democrats are much more limited. Often, these regimes only fall on account of internal conflict. The 1986 ousting of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines was only achieved when key advisors withdrew their support in protest at his regime’s corruption. The 1979 removal of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator, Francisco Macias Nguema, happened because even his closest allies could no longer tolerate his brutal methods.
Imposing sanctions, then, and making sure they’re effective, is our means of increasing the pressure while demonstrating a regime’s inherent weaknesses. For at heart, while tyrants can often look like strong men, they live with the constant fear that, one day, their rule will end, and they will be consigned, like mortals, to the dustbin of history.
How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive is published by John Murray at £22. To order your copy for £18.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
