Robert Kaplan writes in today’s WaPo (although without the links),
Perhaps the greatest security threat we face today is from a paranoid and resentful state leader, armed with biological or nuclear weapons and willing to make strategic use of stateless terrorists.
These old-fashioned bad guys often have uncertain popular support, but that does not make them easy to dislodge. We don’t live in a democratic world so much as in a world in the throes of a very messy democratic transition, so national elections combined with weak, easily politicized institutions produce a lethal mix — dictators armed with pseudo-democratic legitimacy. And they come in many shapes and forms.
Of course, there are the traditional dictatorships like that of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, who have evoked the morbid, crushing tyrannies of antiquity, using personality cults to obliterate individual spirit and keep populations on a permanent war footing.
There are Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, built on economic anger and religious resentment … There is the comic-opera, natural gas-rich regime of Saparmurad Niyazov in Turkmenistan, with his Disneyfied personality cult and slogans (“Halk, Watan, Turkmenbashi,” ghastly echo of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer“) …
These categories are loose and overlapping. What they have in common is that the rulers can exploit the whole panoply of state power, without regard for the will of the people. …
…Because states are harder and more complex to rule now (the result of urbanization, rises in population and independent media), a strongman requires not only coercion but an energizing ideology to whip his supporters into a frenzy and keep opponents at bay.
Television also puts individual charisma at a premium. While advanced democracies in the West tend to produce bland, lowest-common-denominator leaders, less open electoral systems, in which a lot of muscle and thuggery is at work behind the scenes, have a greater likelihood of producing rabble-rousers.
Surely that can’t happen here!
Update: A variation from Billmon.
My God, I thought after the first paragraph that we were talking about shrub!
So did I!
Your post dove tails with this article from the AP in todays’ Orlando Sentinel….
LOS POSADOS STATE FOREST,Calif.-
President Bush marked Earth Day with a lung-busting mountain bike ride high above Napa County wine country, dodging ruts that sent several of his riding partnerscrashing into the mud.
The President spent Saturday morning with a small pack of riders in a foggy redwood forest about 90 minnutes north of San Francisco. He relished the swampy conditions on parts of the trail in this remote state-owned tract, leading his partners repeatedly through huge puddles and streams running high after weeks of heavy rain.
“I still ride the mountain bike primarily to help settle the soul and to burn off the excess energy one gets when you’re living life to its fullest”, Bush told an associated press reporter who accompanied him on the ride.
“We’re able to enjoy the beauty without really disrupting the pristine nature of the place”, said the mud-splattered president after the 65 minute ride.”It’s a classic way for mankind to enjoy God’s gift, plus we get some exercise.”
A long convoy of SUVs and off-road vehicles rumbled behind the group, carrying medics and security agents with machine guns.
The President explained later that he cherishes both the solitude and the social aspect of mountain biking.
“Generally when I ride it is the one time when I feel alone, even though I know people are behind me,” he said. “I ask people a lot of times not to be in my line of vision because all I can see straight ahead is, you know, space”.
You can’t make this shit up.I suppose he’s gonna declare Barney a senator soon.
Heh….I was sure Robert was speaking about us.Sad
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For me, this post is really sad.
Back in the day, I used to admire Robert Kaplan. Balkan Ghosts was a sensitive exploration of a troubled place.
Who might have suspected that he would develope academic pretensions and re-create himself as the Stark Fist of Retrieval? His model of moderately oppressive regimes, creators of vigorous middle classes who rise up and implement Democracy, now reads like a blueprint for the Confederate invasion of Massachusetts.
Who knew?
The
Uh…while “folks” were watching the playoffs it already did. Now we are going to have to fight to take our nation back from the thugs of Corporate Slave State.
Darn. I’ve always gotten a lot out of Kaplan’s books, too. For the most part, he’s a very intelligent, savvy guy. Tragic that he fails to recognize what’s going on in his own backyard. I’d really love to hear him on a panel in a vigorous discussion with some of these generals.
Tom Friedman has had more insight lately. I hope you caught Wolf Blitzer’s worried expression after listening to him today on CNN. Maybe Wolf is finally starting to get it.
Priceless story on Bush’s nice time on Earth Day. I could just imagine his beady eyes shooting angry darts at anyone who came into his line of vision as he hurled himself through the mud.
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